Non toy Birthday Gifts ideas for kids

Why do I feel like I need to “spring clean” in the spring time and then again in the fall….

I think I may have figured it out.

Toys are overtaking our home.

While my household possessions are not extravagant, they accumulated over years—especially as we moved out of our apartment into the mobile home and then into our current house. Each move would result in more rooms to furnish and more empty closets and storage areas to keep our stuff. Fashions changed and thus, we bought new clothes. New technology emerged and we purchased new gadgets. We had 3 more Kids entered our family and with them came toys, Birthday gifts, hand-me-downs, and purchases “necessary” to raise them correctly.

Eventually, our possessions began subtlety to control our lives. We spent countless hours cleaning, sorting, organizing, repairing, replacing, removing, and maintaining our physical possessions—not to mention all the time we spent on the front end earning the money just to make the initial purchase in the first place.

It becoming overwhelming and it has left us all feeling a little cluttered and out of control.  

Toys are everywhere, I even found a toy car wedged under the mattress of our bed and another one hiding in the clean towels.

 I was tired of the constant struggle and reminding my kids {and our day home friends} every.single.day to pick up their toys.  I was tired of the fight so over the summer I took action on my many threats.

Now, I didn’t actually throw all my kids toys away.  

I can’t because I need them for “work” but I did a major overhaul and clean out what my kids didn’t love or use.  Broken toys, puzzles missing pieces all found themselves in the recycling and those that we still in good shape but never used were added to our giveaway pile. We have labels on all of our toy buckets and we drastically slimmed out what was available for play.   

One of my youngest day home friends has recently added a new game we have started referring to as “dump”.  I’m sure you have seen this game before. The rules are simple and anyone can become a master in just one turn.  To play you dumps a bucket of toys on the floor and then choses another one until all of them are empty and then you just walks away from it.  

Great game eh.

While I was in the middle of the “great purge” I was surprised to learn that my kids have completely forgot about those toys and realized that there wasn’t a need to have as many things as we did.  My kids hardly paid attention to all their toys and it was time to take back our home.

The thing is though, when the holidays or Birthday’s rolled around this is when the explosion of toys is at its worse.  Plus, as the kids get older the toys just get bigger and noisier too.  The drum kit we bought for our sone has been covered by a bed sheet since he opened it up Christmas morning.  The drum sticks on the other hand get used a long.   The karaoke machine we figured the girls needed has suffered from the same fate as the drum kit.  Enough is enough!

September is right around the corner and already a slew of birthday party invites have started rolling in which means we will be purchasing Birthday Gifts to give to their friends.

Our little ones celebrate their birthdays within a month of each other so, I know that very soon family and friends are going to be asking what my children would like for their birthdays gifts.  

The question alone makes me want to cringe at telling them anything because I know they would play with it for a short time and soon it would be a forgotten toy that they refuse to clean up.  

So, I consulted my girlfriends to see how they handle the dreaded “birthday question” and we came up with some options that are great non-toy Birthday gifts for kids. {yes, that’s a thing and no, you won’t be a bad person if you don’t show up with the latest Ever After High doll}.

What they need:  I know as a kid bed sheets was probably one of if not the worst gifts you could ever receive and while star wars bed sheets can be a cool gift Idea.. what about pajamas? a new bathrobe? fuzzy bunny slippers?  

Monthly kit for kids:  There are tons of great kits out there that children can receive monthly.  We are looking into signing up with Kiwi Crate as they deliver fun hands-on experiences every month.   Right now you can receive 50% off your first-month kiwi crate subscription {$10 savings} + bonus welcome kit with the promo code: GOODSHOPGIFT  

Tickets to a Show, Concert or Play: We live in “Festival city” so there are great shows or plays on around town pretty much all the time. Finding out dates and times is easy, so simply see if you can find one around the time of the occasion. If it’s a birthday and you find a play or show that you’d like to take them to but its a few weeks away – you can even print the tickets off, put them in a nice little box, wrap it and then they have something to open and something to look forward to! 

Membership to the Zoo or Amusement park:  We have gone to the zoo three times this summer and we really only spent a couple hours so having a membership would allows us to come multiple times without me feeling like we didn’t get our money’s worth.  Many of these places have great activities and events for children that change monthly too so you never have the same experience twice.

Gift cards: These .. we are particularly bad at holding on to Gift cards for a ridiculously long time so when we finally get a chance to cash them in the kids come out with a lot.  Our daughters just cashed in three toys r us gift card per child and our youngest purchased a leap pad 2, a case and a game.  We really love gift cards because it gives the kids a chance to get what they want from the store they love to shop at already.   {For us this is the perfect non-toy Birthday gift}

One-time passes:  A gift card to the movies, bowling or this type of activity is a great gift.  They are perfect to use on a rainy day and when you have multiple children having a gift card to offset some of the cost helps out a lot.  My kids love going to the movies or bowling and it is a great way to spend time as a family together.

Classes:  There are so many different sports and activities that my children want to try out.  Getting a gift certificate to any of these will give my kids experiences which, are way better than toys. Horseback riding, pottery class, Piano, fencing, climbing, Swimming, Gymnastics there are so many different options you can pick from and as a surprise sign them up for!

So when they ask, I will tell recommend non-toy Birthday Gift ideas for the kids!

 What do you think is a great non-toy gift to give?

What do you give for those special Birthdays?