Frugal confession

I’ve become a master at regifting.

Did you know that once your preschooler gets to be a certain age, almost every weekend becomes a birthday party weekend?

The regifting started innocently enough.  We had a party to go to but no time to hit up Target or any similar store for the $10-15 toy and bag that would be required as party admission.  So I hit our “to go to goodwill” pile.  Took out a new still-in-packaging toy gun that we’d gotten as a present and confiscated (per DH’s decree).  It’s a super-hero party, this is a super-blaster… surely they won’t mind, I thought.  Then I added some books… a Thomas the Train engine book present that we’d confiscated because we’re horrible parents and hate Thomas (I have yet to meet another parent who denies Thomas so no guilt in passing those on, unlike the phaser), and a couple of great books that we had duplicates of because I’m addicted to buying sets from Scholastic.  Then I found a blank white paper bag with white handles, and stuffed it with buzz-lightyear-green tissue paper leftover from ancient baby-shower gifts (I’m a bit of a hoarder re:  gift packaging).  And done.

It was exhilarating.  So I did it again.  And again.

Next up… a princess party.  Luckily my mom has decided our blog is too boring to read (hi mom!) or she might be mildly upset that the (NWT) embroidered pillow she got matching versions of for my sister and me, “I’m not bossy, I just have better ideas” is being passed along (Point made, mom, I got it).  Adding in a phonics game and a couple of Scholastic books in a bag with tissue and we’re set.  I am still wavering on the pillow as it is kinda true for this particular child and her mom remarks on it all the time– I think she’d be cool with it.  We could just do the phonics game and books.

DC gets a LOT of toys as gifts, more than (s)he can handle, more than we can handle.  And some of them don’t fit our parenting philosophy.  In the past those have gone to Goodwill.  DC also gets a lot of books, and I used to send the Scholastic duplicates to daycare.  It has come to my attention that most kids don’t have as many books as our kid has, and that parents seem to welcome books as gifts.  (With us, we probably already own what you’re trying to give us, but that’s ok, we can regift.  We won’t tell you because I can still hear my mother’s mortified lecture from back when I was 6 about being a gracious gift recipient.)  Everything is new and unused except the gift bags.

So it seems like a win-win all around (except maybe goodwill and daycare).   Since it’s regifting, the value of the package is more than what we’d buy new, especially since most books are in the $10 to $15 range all by themselves (though they can be $3 when bought in sets from Scholastic.)

But maybe we’re delusional.

Are we going too far by passing off brand-new in packaging gifts to other unsuspecting parents?  Should we be heading out to Target at each birthday party?

Do you ever regift like this?  Would you be insulted if you found out we had?