I am the same way…actually have to slow myself down sometimes from discarding things! And same goes on the gifting of charitable donations – I think it’s a beautiful way to show love for the world and honor the people you are close to. Yay Ashley!

What a great post! Thank you for sharing. Also, thank you for including Trees for the Future! As a regular reader of Design Sponge (I love it!), and as an employee of TFTF, I was very pleasantly surprised to see you include our organization in your list! Thank you!

Nice to know there are other “compulsive discarders” out there! When it comes to gift giving I usually try to give either something I know the person truly wants or something they can use up. Thanks for the charitable ideas : )

Inspiring post, thank you!

Loved your post. All the “stuff” we get feels exciting when we get it but it’s charm quickly fades. It just clutters up our lives and it takes up precious time to deal with it. Life is too short to be the caretaker of the wrong details. I always try to make everthing worthwhile and meaningful. Whatyou are giving your grandmother – the giftcard along with the gift of your time and company is the best gift ever. Thanks for sharing your ideas.

We are supporting these numbers have faces this year in our giving, it is such a needed program.

http://www.thesenumbers.com/

About on their website:
These Numbers Have Faces (TNHF) invests in the future leaders of South Africa by empowering young people to reduce poverty in their own communities.

We did Heifer this year and also Best Friends Animal Sanctuary. We all have enough STUFF so we also try to give experiences. I loved your post! Thank you.
PS….I have to hide the “discards” or my husband will try to keep it all.

thanks for the incredibly inspiring post. it serves as a wonderful reminder of a deeper sense of giving during the holiday season … and year round.

i like this post with one exception; heifer international.
(sorry for the link but) this sums up with all the reasons why heifer does NOT end world hunger and in fact helps destroy the planet:
http://www.straight.com/article-273770/vancouver/lesley-fox-if-you-care-about-world-hunger-dont-give-cow

i personally support charities such as Trees for Life and Food for Life instead. :)

What a yummy post because I’m also a non-hoarder and sometimes donate most of the previous seasons wardrobe to the Salvation Army,
I am also on board about giving gifts that matter, such as Gift certificate to a Spa, or restaurant,etc; not only are the
gifts enjoyable, but are most likely to create pleasant memories for the
recipients!

Being a ‘compulsive discarder’ myself, I also try to find gifts that aren’t just stuff. My best idea as of late: Handmade journals! So easy to personalize and it’s something anyone can ‘use up’.

I’ve used Heifer donations as gifts, and can second your recommendation. Great program.

I absolutely love this post! I have been attempting to give only handmade or non-stuff gifts this year and I must say that Heifer International is one of my very favorite organizations.

@gwern. I really hope you don’t dissuade people from donating to Heifer International on the basis of the Lesley Fox article. Lesley Fox is not an unbiased aid observer but rather a vegan lifestyle advocate, and Fox’s claims in the article you link range from unsubstantiated (“Animals can be left to suffer from horrible neglect, lack of veterinary care, inadequate shelter, or dehydration.” Where’s the evidence to back up this claim?)to evasive (Fox makes the unsubstantiated claim that meat isn’t worth the grain it’s fed, but Heifer International donates these animals primarily for their sustainable produce [milk, eggs, offspring], not for their meat), to misleading (the report Fox references to establish that the “meat industry” has severe environmental impacts studied large factory farming operations, *not* families owning a couple goats and chickens). In short, you have provided no evidence either in your post or in your link to the Fox article that Heifer in fact “helps destroy the planet.” Please stick to recommending charities you like rather than attacking perfectly good organizations like Heifer with empty rhetoric.

Nicely put Lynda W! I went and read Lesley’s article and posted a comment:
Hey all,
I have to admit I’m very disappointed in this article. I might sound and be a little biased on this subject, due to the fact I have just spent a year volunteering at Heifer International’s learning center. There are many points in this article that are just plain wrong! Where to start?

First of all Heifer is a DEVELOPMENT organization, meaning it works with people who have their basic needs met and are desiring to grow and looking for opportunities to do so. They believe strongly in and fully support relief agencies, but they aren’t one. Therefore the people they are partnering with are not starving, Heifer would never ask someone to take food from their mouths in order to feed their animals, thats not sustainable, which is one of their 12 cornerstones (something I could expound upon but will refrain from doing so.)

Second Heifer’s mission is ‘to work with communities to end hunger and poverty AND care for the earth’ and they are doing really great things that fit into both categories!
1. They do not ship animals anywhere. They used to and realized it was unsustainable and started buying animals in country for many reasons, one being the protection of biological diversity.
2. A single cow, for example, is not just dropped of with a recipe for bbq ribs! Heifer works with a community for sometimes over a year before one hoof steps into the village. This time is heavily spent in education, community building and preparation. One part of this education is learning all you can get from one animal, known as the 7 m’s (MILK, MUSCLE, MATERIALS, MONEY, MOTIVATION, MANURE AND THEN MEAT)

3. As for the global warming issue this is something Heifer is also concerned with and working hard to come up with solutions! For one heifer doesn’t just give animals, they also work on re-forestation projects, giving tree saplings to improve soil and stop erosion. They also teach green manure practices (which is where you sow plants that fix nitrogen and sequester carbon…pretty cool i think). Also as for those megga methane producing animals, Heifer helps people by teaching about and installing appropriate technologies such as bio-gas units (which are also very cool, look it up!) which capture the methane released from the manure and is then used as a cooking gas! It only stinks for a second, but it reduces or eliminates a community’s need to cut down trees and it harnesses a resource they have…POOP!

I could say so much more! I have had the opportunity to meet and speak with many project participants from all over the world whose lives have been enriched through the blossoming of their community, the improved nutrition of their family and their expanding opportunities due to the generosity of a stranger! I urge everyone DO YOUR HOMEWORK!!! No person or organization is perfect but they sure are trying and doing wonderful things!
I also have to say that I myself was very cynical about Heifer International when I decided to commit a year of my life to volunteer with them, and thought that the more I learned and the closer I got to the top people the more I would be disappointed (as this was a trend I had experienced with other organizations). But my experience, obviously was the opposite! I have to say I don’t like their website very much, i find it hard to navigate but give them a call, better yet go on a study tour and see the projects yourself!

below is an article that made me laugh because it seems it could have been a rebuttal to this one:
http://www.heifer.org/atf/cf/%7BE384D2DB-8638-47F3-A6DB-68BE45A16EDC%7D/Exchange_129_Spring_2008.pdf
but in the end don’t just listen to me or the above article and PLEASE dont listen to Lesley Fox! Think about it and make up your own mind!

Loved the post. I am not a stuff person either, although I love beautiful things. Having a toddler (AKA “the destroyer” ) around also prevents stuff buildup.

In term of UK charity gift catalogues, I would recommend http://www.GoodGifts.org, brainchild of the Charities Advisory Trust, which has a wide variety of gifts at wide variety of prices, is run by friendly & helpful staff and the money you give is guaranteed to buy what you think you have paid for. Merry gift-giving all.

I’d love to suggest another option – microplace.com is a microfinance organization that actually lets you invest money while empowering entrepreneurs around the world. If you check out this link, you can actually get two gift certificates for the price of one – to make an investment in honor of a loved one, that both they and a person in need will benefit from: https://www.microplace.com/gifts.

Thanks for all the other wonderful, wonderful ideas! I love the suggestions for monthly get togethers with relatives – especially elder relatives for whom time can be of the essence.

Hooray – what a great post and some great links – thank you. And oh my the Collyer’s lives made sad reading indeed.

I am someone who loves stuff, and so I spend a lot of time in thrift stores. Through this experience I can tell you that St Vincent de paul, and the Salvation Army are worthy charities. St. Vincent gives the needy vouchers for furniture, clothes, shoes etc…. I have also seen workers arrange to have rent paid for people in need. There is always free food available in my local St Vincent. The Salvation Army provides free quality child care to school age children which includes a hot meal. Every time I frequent these thrift store I experience their charity in action. I can’t think of any other charity where your money can help people where you live and believe me this year they are there.

no, i don’t dissuade people to donate to heifer based on what leslie fox has to say. i admit i’d never even heard of her until i skimmed that write up the other day. you’re right, i posted in haste (hence the typos). i admit i posted that link because in my skimming it appeared as though she had some good points. however i’ve read too many other (solid) articles about heifer (that made up my mind) to not say anything.

of course lots of people (and i was once one of them) think that heifer is a great thing! they have a very effective marketing campaign (which might account for their higher than average overhead; 28% vs. similar organizations’ 11%). i DO think heifer has their hearts in the right place. i don’t think they’re “evil”, they’re just not practical. two thirds of non-caucasians are lactose intolerant so sending cows to africa (they have implemented a cow-giving program in kenya) doesn’t make sense.
let me explain why i said “destroys the planet”: animal agriculture is the biggest contributor to global warming (via U.N. report). it’s irresponsible to impose our western values on non-western cultures who cannot physically support those values. one cow consumes three times the amount of grain and water as one human – not to mention the amount of rainforest that’s being clear cut to grow said grain. in addition to straining scarce resources and contributing to global poverty, animal farming degrades land and pollutes water with run-off manure (i haven’t investigated that ‘bio-gas unit’ yet so i can’t comment on it).

we as a planet should be scaling down animal agriculture, not implementing more of it! yes, i’m aware that ten cows is not equivalent to ‘factory farming’ but western society started with just a few cows, who’s to say that in the future these recipients are not going to develop into more and more efficient/more harmful farming? there was an article in harper’s magazine about a rabbit farmer (via heifer donations of rabbits) in china who became a millionaire and started a training school that trained (as of 2005) 300,000 more rabbit farmers. that doesn’t seem very small scale.
maybe heifer doesn’t literally send a bbq pork recipe with their animals but let’s not pretend these animals are not being killed for food. dairy cows need to be pregnant in order to produce milk; where are all the babies (especially the boys) ending up? passed on to other farmers/eaten and their offspring passed on/eaten and so on and the mothers killed and eaten when they dry up (i won’t even touch on the cruelty of using animals as commodities). the kenya farming operation pigs are specifically bred for food and they’re talking about building a slaughterhouse on site in the near future. so it’s not exactly humane spending here.

animals at best, give a return of only 10% of the food they are provided. 50% of the farmland worldwide (75% in the usa) is used to feed animals for human consumption – food that could be used to feed people and land that could be used to grow more nutritious food for people.
i’m quoting ghandi here: if we try to feed the poor the way the rich eat this world will not sustain us all.

it would be ideal if more people would support organizations such as http://www.plenty.org/ and http://www.treesforlife.org/ who are a little more responsible in regards to the planet and animals (human and non-human alike).

(sorry that was so long but i tried not to spew “empty rhetoric” this time ;) )

You all might like this, too: http://ravenandlily.com
Beautiful stuff. They collect left-over materials from LA designers, send it to Africa where they make items that would appeal to customers savvy with current design trends.

Thanks so much for the ideas and web resources. Feels like the time is ripe for more thoughtful, conscientious gift-giving, especially given the overwhelming amount of need in the world right now.
Some other ideas are to write the recipient a poem or a song. Knitting and crocheting projects are also really personal ways to give. As you’re making the gift in the weeks/ months leading up to Christmas, the person remains on your mind as you work, and you get excited thinking of them opening something so custom-created. It’s really rewarding as the “giver.”

gwern, I have to take issue with some of your claims. Most of those arguments don’t even apply to non-industrial farming. In fact, in many cases grazing animals are the best solution to revitalizing land that has been ravaged by shallow-rooted row crops leaching nutrients from a thin layer of topsoil and releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

When cows graze on grasses, there is not enough energy left to support all of the roots, so the plant reacts by sloughing roots, and then builds back deeper roots as the plant regrows, creating a deep root system. Those deep roots are extremely beneficial, as are the sloughed off roots. The sloughed off roots become decaying organic material that feeds microorganisms, restores subsoil health, and steadily increases the organic matter and carbon content of the soil, making it fertile. Deep-rooted grasses dig down to fresh minerals which become available to everything up the food chain, creating a healthier ecosystem. Pastured land, if managed well, can pump huge amounts of organic matter back into the soil, pulling significant amounts of carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere and conserving massive amounts of water, while significantly increasing biodiversity.

Heifer International deals with complicated situations that don’t always have simple answers, but they focus on sustainability, so most of the cherry picked arguments compiled by PETA etc don’t really apply.

fair enough, glenn, but please don’t lump me into anything having to do with peta. these arguments weren’t from them but from scientific journals, etc. and i wasn’t only speaking specifically about grazing animals.

anyway, i never meant for this to turn into a debate on here, i’m with ashley and hope that we would all do thorough research into the charities we’d like to support because there are some that are definitely better than others.

Well, thanks to Gwern, Lynn, Ashley, and Glenn for having this debate and keeping it civil. This may be the only blog-comments debate I’ve seen that was actually civil and, more importantly, included citations. Very informative, thanks!

am in awe…… sinc i just a read a description of myself…. and yep! couldn’t express to people… i tell AM NOT A DUST COLLECTOR…excellent work..to all at Design Sponge

I love to see all this important passionate debate on one of my favorite design websites…lets all keep thinking talking and listening!

I agree Gwern about Heifer international. Many of these cultures are not traditionally ‘big’ meat eaters and these animals require land that would otherwise be used to farm and farming feeds more people. You don’t need animals to get protein and most of the worlds population IS lactose intolerant – milk needs to be converted to yogurt and cheeses etc.

One more charity recommendation? Trickle Up — the ultimate “teach a man to fish.” it’s a super-micro grant program (not loans — grants.) Trickle Up gives $100 seed money and teaches the principles of running a biz. They’ve helped over 250,000 people worldwide out of poverty permanently, help people make a living without leaving home, thus keeping indigenous cultures in place. Mostly women. http://www.trickleup.org. Love these people. Thanks!