Ship.

Donate.

IN our family, we definitely do remind each other of our travel/gift limitations for Christmas-time, etc. Driving is easier than flying b/c you can cram things into the car (within reason, of course!). Flying inhibits it the most. When this happens, we just request small things or things that are easily transportable (one year, I did personalized beach towels for my 4 nieces and nephews, so they could be unfolded flat or rolled or whatever in a suitcase in order to fit on a plane).

But, every family is different. . .

How about donating half the money the spent on presents in your sons name to a children's charity, giving him the certificate as a present and explaining to him that he helped provide food/medicine/school for a child for one year...?

Anonymous wrote:Tell them that we have a son who would love generous grandparents like them.

And he takes Visa and Master Card... Plus cash.

Tell them that we have a son who would love generous grandparents like them.

Sorry, hit post too soon. Basically, dh and I told each mother to limit gift giving in ways we had already decided in a private conversation. This conversation was repeated multiple times for at least a year. I now box all the extras and use them for travel. However, I still have a huge box in the closet of never-used toys and activity books.

Dh and I have had to be very frank with our mothers. Both love to shop, have few hobbies, and go way overboard with gifts. In fact, mil is coming for a visit and Dd just told us grandma gives her a gift for every day she visits, and she's excited for all the loot. I want my kids to value their grandparents for who they are, not the stuff they can buy.

My first priority in this is not slighting our wonderful family member

It's called shipping.

Anonymous wrote:You could ask them to have any large items shipped to your house originally.

+1. That way if DS is disappointed about Christmas being over then he will still have a few gifts to open when he gets home.

It also can be an effective form of damage control if you have received gifts you think weren't appropriate for him (age-wise or other reason).

Not bad at all!

Each of you to your respective families: "Hey, we love that you are so generous, but we had trouble getting everything in our car last Christmas! Is there any way you could get some smaller gifts this year like books or clothes or smaller toys? We would also love a zoo membership // gift cards to a bounce house place // the cost of entrance to. The Baltimore aquarium."

Be ready with details on clothing sizes too. If you have generally friendly relations, I think that would be fine. My parents are usually good about this kind of thing.

How old is your DC? Terrible problem to have for sure. You can have them contribute towards your DC's college fund or something rather than spending money on gifts that are not necessary. They can also donate on your DC's behalf. There are so many kids who will be happy with even one gift. I am sure those kids will thank your DC.

You could ask them to have any large items shipped to your house originally.

When we visit my in-laws in Portland, OR, we often have more things coming home than we had going out. We typically take a bunch of stuff of the bigger, lighter stuff to the UPS store, pack a box and ship it home the slowest way it can get there so that we beat the box home. We sometimes use sweaters, sweatshirts, even dirty laundry to wrap and insulate other items. This frees up room in our suitcases for things that we don't want to ship.

We find this works much better than trying to impose limits on the family.

How about suggesting the grandparents give a different type of gift vs. something tangible? For example, an extracurricular activity such as horseback riding lessons (and that is just an example off the top of my head!). Then they could give a couple of little small things to unwrap -- they are going to want to watch him unwrap. Would they be open to this idea? Or they could do something with him which would be special, take him somewhere.

Mostly joking. We saw my family and my in-laws over Christmas, and they are very generous, sweet people and DS is the only grandchild on both sides. We have a small house, and were driving home from Ohio, and it was really, really, really hard to fit all of the presents in the car to get home. Terrible problem to have, right? Any suggestions for tactfully requesting a limit on the volume of gifts or is there no good way to do this? We're going to come up with a list of fairly small items for DS, but wouldn't be surprised if one or more grandparents find something that they just had to get for DS. My first priority in this is not slighting our wonderful family members, but it would be nice if we don't have so so so much stuff to bring home.