Your Toughest Gifting Questions, Answered

Introducing the 2024 Downtime interactive gift guide installment, including a whole lot of ideas under $50.

This is a long newsletter. If it cuts off, you can see the full version on the web here.

I hope you’re not all gifted out just yet—because today, I’m kicking off the first round of answers to some of Downtime readers’ trickiest gifting questions. A big thanks to everyone who sent one in!

In today’s post, I’ve got extremely specific gift ideas for…

• White elephant gifts under $40

• Gifts for the classic hard-to-shop-for dad

• Fancy gifts for bosses (or just fancy people)

• Gifts for your tween nephew and niece

Enjoy and happy gifting.

—Alisha

Quick links:

• Want to see a list of gift ideas, sans commentary? Check out this page.

• Need more gift ideas? Our group chat on Substack or the Downtime chat on the Geneva app (*for paid subscribers only) is a great way to crowdsource ideas from fellow readers.

• See last year’s edition here.

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Your Toughest Gifting Questions, Answered

Our annual tradition returns. You asked, I tried my best to answer. Let’s get into it.

A $40 or under white elephant gift that could work across ages.

A few of you sent in some form of this question. White elephant gifts are notorious for being funny and considered “prank gifts,” but let’s be honest that that stuff usually ends up in the trash. And there’s nothing we hate more than useless presents that add to waste!

My approach to this category is stuff that is covetable. Stuff that whoever is participating in the white elephant gift exchange will want to steal. And because this is for a wide variety of ages, it has to be a gift that’s generally crowdpleasing, somewhat practical, and because I’m not entirely humorless and this is a white elephant gift exchange after all—offer some form of delight or surprise wow factor.

Some practical-leaning items:

• A retractable charger, which is just genius and endlessly useful.

• A cozy blanket. Surprisingly, a lot of the good ones are on sale for $40-ish. This is a gift that “feels” substantial in size, but the price is just right.

• A miniature puzzle with a funny theme.

• A microwaveable, lavender-scented neck wrap, if you want to go the self-care route.

• This handheld spice grinder was gifted to me last year and it’s one of the most useful kitchen tools I own. I use it for things like grinding flax seeds, cardamom pods, the little bits of stuff that don’t really need to go into a full-size grinder.

If you want to lean into a more humorous tone, here are some options that might actually get used or consumed:

• 2025 Calendar of Extremely Accurate Birds by Tommy Siegel. (Aka butts on birds.) I kid you not—our friends who we gifted this to text us monthly to say how delighted they are each time they flip the page. Worth it for the entertainment value alone.

• A large tin of fancy Spanish potato chips. People go crazy for these.

• An olive candle.

• A giant bucket of Maldon salt. Like, so ridiculously large that it’s probably a lifetime supply of flaky salt.

• A novelty Jellycat. It’s a bit niche, but it’ll be appreciated by whoever steals it as an IYKYK item.

Gifts for the classic “hard-to-shop-for” dad.

“Midwest dad mid-50s, buys everything he needs and doesn’t like clutter. He likes to be warm and cozy, is a big traveler, and enjoys good food. Rarely uses the gifts I get him unless they are extremely practical or consumable 🙃”

Sigh. Ah yes, the dad. This category comes up year after year. I have not met one person who finds it easy to gift their dad.

Here are nine ideas for this reader’s dad, and all those other well-meaning dads who actually make gifting feel a bit tortuous (lol):

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