gifts...

ok, i'll admit it. gifts give me anxiety. no, not giving gifts, receiving them. my birthday was this week and i got some really amazing things from my mother-in-law. let me tell you, she has me pegged with my taste in vintage goodies. the problem is that i'm trying to reduce the amount of stuff that comes in my house and now i have a huge bag of stuff to deal with. now, it's not that i'm ungrateful, i just don't need anything!

my family knows that i'm continually purging, so they are very careful in what they give me because they know i have no problem re-gifting or donating it within a few months. my parents gave me a necklace, huge assortment of lotion and perfume in my favorite scent (something on my *buy* list), and cash. :) thanks mom and dad. nothing that doesn't have a purpose, no clutter. awesome.

there are a few things my mother-in-law gave me that i'm not crazy about so maybe they'll end up in the donation box in the next few months and i gave my mom a vintage doily because she loves them. i don't. what do you do with gifts that you don't necessarily like and how do you communicate it to people, i.e. in-laws, that gifts aren't "your thing" without coming off rude? i really, truly don't need any more things in my life and so now it's time to go about another purge so that these new things will have a place and old things can go. "one in, one out rule" for everything!