Leave it to Buffalo ReUse to have a ReGifting party right after Christmas. The idea is simple – bring a gift you know you’re not going to use, and give it to someone else. Who knows? They might like it.
ReUse’s Director of Community Programs Caesandra Seawell (left, in full story) greeted us at the door and showed us where to put the gifts. She pointed to a tree, strung with little tags with numbers on them, and surrounded by various packages wrapped in newspaper, recycled wrapping paper, old calendar pages, brown paper and string, and our favorite – a Walmart bag that came with the item Newell was going to regift.
Newell said someone had brought him something he liked, “not from Walmart,” a few years back, and he’d been hiding the bag it in his house ever since.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, “the bag is going with what I brought.”
Caesandra had made a trivia sheet for everyone to fill out. It was steeped with ReUse-based questions, many that would be obscure to anyone who didn’t have a very active interest in ReUse. There were insider questions like: What are the Reuse cat’s and dog’s names? There was an easy one: What was the first location of the ReUse store, ReSource? And an obvious one: What is the new name for the ReUse compost pile? (Answer: ReDoo.) Okay, maybe that isn’t so obvious. The winner was awarded a ReUse calendar (that you can purchase at the link).
When it came time to open gifts, everyone selected a tag from the tree, and we went in order of number. Caesandra explained that if anyone saw something they liked in any of the previously opened gifts, they could take it, but then that person would get to choose another. Easy come, easy go, RePick.
There were a lot of great things to unwrap. Some people were thrilled with what they got, some gifts were just funny, and here’s a note to all the gift-givers out there – there were a lot of candles.
There was a watch, a bullet-shaped coffee thermos, tomato soup tureens, a plush bathrobe, a Mormon Bible, pretty candlesticks, a duck shooter (it shoots small duck-shaped bullets), a bacon-scented air freshener, bean soup starter, and the “stained glass” vase and candleholder I brought.
Being a builder of stained glass panels, getting a vase with small glass pieces glued to it was not a thrill to me, but I was happy to see go once and then get traded for later in the evening. I invited that person to visit my scrap pile of glass at a future date for further reuse.
At the end of the night, Newell regifted me the mug that came with his thermos (it matches mine, not his), and I snuck up the stairs and slipped my new Mormon Bible under the pillow of our hostess.
We talked about next year’s party when someone suggested we bring gifts that could actually go to ReSource. It sounds like a good idea, but could it be as much fun?
Use this story as a guide to a ReGift party of your own, and remember that ReUse accepts donations of money and materials all year round. One man’s junk…