Dirty little secret - 
RE-GIFTING -- A GREAT IDEA OR TACKY?
A few years ago, I was visiting my family in Oklahoma. I was excited to see all my nieces, nephews and cousins.
We gathered for the holiday dinner and gift giving. It was a tradition that each person opened a gift while other family members looked on -- and then another family member would open their gift... and so it went.
My Aunt Judith had a beautifully wrapped gift in front on her.
She carefully removed the ribbon and folded the paper neatly so she could reuse it again.
As she lifted the lid to the box, she let out a scream. My first thought was that there was a live mouse in the box! It turned out to be a coffee maker with automatic everything -- radio and timer included.
The problem was two-fold: Aunt Judith hated coffee and she had given the coffee maker to Cousin Carole as a wedding present a couple of years prior ... Well, it turns out that Cousin Carole got 3 coffee makers and re-gifted THIS automatic coffee maker to my cousin Paula ... who re-gifted it to Aunt Judith!
Regifting ~~ Apparently, the word can be attributed to a 1995 "Seinfeld" episode. Although experts tell us that re-gifting has been around a long time, it is more popular than ever. A recent survey found that nearly 60 percent of the people polled admitted they had re-gifted!
Here are some tips for re-gifting!
Don't re-gift something that has been used
Put the gift in a NEW bag or new box
Don't leave on part of the tape or old wrapping paper
Be sure to remove the gift card that came with the gift
And Don't return the same gift to the person who gave it to you in the first place!
Re-gifting makes the holidays GREEN! (it is a good way to recycle gifts and save money)
Now come on and share your dirty little secret ... have you ever re-gifted? Do you think it is okay to re-gift?
Do you have a funny re-gifting story to share?
(c) 2007 Joan Whitebook - all rights reserved.
Photo -- courtesy of flickr - allison crain
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