My girlfriend and I have recently moved in together (yay!) – we moved out of our respective apartments and into a 3rd location.
We’re both mature adults (in our 50’s), so as you can imagine we both came with well-furnished households. We’ve got Lots O’ Crap that we needed to merge and blend and consolidate, but it seems to be working.
We’re throwing a housewarming party so our friends & family can see our new home (and meet our new partner, in some cases) and wish us well.
What do we do about housewarming gifts? There are a limited number of things that could actually be useful (like, I somehow lost all the lids to my pots and pans in the move), but we absolutely don’t need anymore tchotchkes and knick-knacks.
Should we send out a “no presents, please!” message?
Should we register for the stuff we might actually want?
Should we not say anything at all?
I suspect that if you don’t call it a housewarming party, you will get fewer housewarming gifts. So for starters, you can call it a summer fun party or whatever.
hogarth has it right. If anyone asks about gifts, let them know what you might need, say “no gifts, please” or suggest a donation to an organization such as Habitat for Humanity.
Wouldn’t people who know you enough to be invited to your home know that you are not a young couple just starting out who would need housewarming gifts?
You’re probably going to get a lot of wine and candles. Say thank you.
You’re in my age bracket. If we got such an invitation I’m sure we’d scratch our heads and end up bringing wine and/or liquor. I’d pretty much know that a toaster or coffee maker would not be needed.
You can’t really say “no presents” on the invite (especially since it’s already gone out) but of course you say “Oh, don’t bring ANYTHING” if people ask. Other than that, I’m with hogarth, you shouldn’t have called it a housewarming if you absolutely didn’t want presents.
Personally, I’d do what Leaffan said - given your ages, I’d probably bring a bottle of wine or some other such consumable that I’d hope you liked. Booze/a nice fruit basket/candles/jam/etc. Heck, if I knew you were a drinker, it’d be booze no question. You non-drinkers are a lot harder to buy for.
You’ll probably get a bunch of alcohol related gifts just like the previous posters said. I wouldn’t worry about getting a bunch of “stuff”. I’ve never brought anything to a housewarming other than a bottle of wine or booze.
I take that back - for one, I brought booze AND nice glasses, but I knew the people didn’t have the glasses already.
Our housewarming (we bought a place after several years of renting) resulted in a quadrupling of our wine cache and a doubling of the liquor cache, and that’s even though the guests did their level best to drink everything in sight. Also we got some fugly candles.
It’s a little distressing that “candles” seems to be the default gift (other than wine)…my late wife was a collector and hoarder of candles, candle sticks, candle dishes, and every other form of candle presentation device. I already got a garage full of the stuff and will never need to purchase another candle as long as I live.
But I will accept any and all gifts with good grace and in the spirit intended.
You could start a trend. Set up a table with extras from the merger, and invite people to take something away with them. Helping to declutter = housewarming gift?
