Would you gift a plant to someone?

Plenty of occasions come with the joy of giving, or should I say joy of accepting. E-commerce has made it easy to find all kinds of things online. Websites and blogs publish ideas to make things easier. Public wish lists and registries are digital places where you can find what the recipient really needs.

I don’t like the idea of telling people what I want and expect them to give it to me. It seems inorganic and calculated. Some people don’t like surprises but I do. I also feel it is arrogant on my side to expect. The way you give boils down to the relationship the giver and the taker has with each other. For example, my husband tells me what he wants for his birthday. He believes that the best gift is the one the recipient wants.

Some families like to have a price cap when things are to be exchanged, such as the family shown in the movie Four Christmases. This year during Bhau Beez, an Indian festival celebrating the relationship between a brother and a sister, my brothers and I exchanged cash. Every time we do this, it ends up being about the amount of money, even though that’s not the intention. So, we decided to not exchange cash from this year forward. We could also put a cap if it keeps things even.

As appears in FastCoDesign, in 2014, a survey was conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center, which polled 1,500 American adults about their least favorite kinds of Christmas gifts to receive. To my disappointment and in my biased view, people didn’t really enjoy getting plants. Each to their own, everyone is different. However, we do have a choice to choose a gift, whatever it may be, to be a sustainable one – conflict free, fair trade, made of recycled materials, organic, toxic-free, and so on.

Or like Anne-Marie Bonneau says in her blog, “Make Memories, Not Waste“. She has compiled a list of experiences that some of your loved ones may appreciate.