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[quote=Anonymous]Ok, I know that to some degree the answer to this is just "be grateful" or "say thank you and then get rid of it,"  but in case anyone has other ideas, thought I'd throw this question out there:

Has anyone had luck changing the gift-giving behavior of family (without being tacky, rude, or seeming ungrateful)?

The situation is this:  we are expecting our first child, and have pretty clear opinions on what we want our child to play with/wear/eat/etc.  For example, we have a Greenguard-certified crib, an organic crib mattress and I plan on doing organic crib bedding (for those of you who say it's a waste... that's fine, but I'm happy to spend money on it even if it's only purpose is to make me feel better about things/not interested in fighting about the relative value of organic cotton).

MIL recently saw our nursery via Facetime and immediately started talking about the things she could buy for it/give to us-- including large things that won't fit in the nursery (or things that don't work with our current setup/priorities).  I'm happy to smile, accept things, and then get rid of them, but I really would love to avoid having to do that for the rest of the child's life.  (I know we don't see eye to eye on clothing or toys either).   SIL gets around this by having toys that 'stay at grandma's"-- but they are local to the IL's and we are not, which means we only go to their house once a year or so, and leaving toys there for the kids doesn't really make sense.

It seems like a huge waste to have her give gifts we won't use, and I don't want to insult her when she figures out we aren't using stuff, but I also don't want to be a bad gift receiver.  Anyone else have luck casually getting people to buy things that are more in line with their own priorities for their family (e.g. creative toys like blocks/legos/wooden trains vs. things with batteries that make noise and break quickly?)[/quote]

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