Regifting is something many of us are guilty of.
Whether you receive something you already have or a present you’ll never use, if you know someone who would love it, it makes sense not to just chuck it in the bin for the sake of it when someone else can get pleasure out of it. Of course, regifting becomes an issue when you’re doing it just to save some money, and you know the recipient wouldn’t care about what you’ve given them.
However, one woman was left dumbfounded after she received a present from a relative, only to realise it was something she’d already given them the previous year.
Taking to Mumsnet, the woman kept it short and sweet, writing: “Last Christmas, I bought relative shower gel. It was quite fancy but not amazingly so. This year, I received the same shower gel back. Am I being unreasonable to give it back to them for their birthday in April? I don’t like it.”
Some were quick to point out that they obviously “didn’t like it” either, so they should probably “give it to a food bank” rather than keep gifting it to each other for different occasions.
However, one person joked that they should “do it forever,” to see how long they could keep giving each other the shower gel for. Another echoed the sentiment, penning: “That’s every other Christmas sorted for you both for the rest of your lives. Seems good to me!”
Somebody suggested that they should stop buying presents for one another, writing: “I don’t know why you bought shower gel you didn’t like. Had the relative told you they liked this one? You should be the better person and not give it back to them again. Maybe stop buying each other presents. It sounds like neither of you appreciates the other.”
The original poster responded to this comment, saying: “I thought they liked it. Now I don’t know if the one they gave me was a new one because they like it so much or they’ve re-gifted it as they hate it. I’ll have to mark the bottle subtly”.
She even said that the reason she assumed her relative liked the brand was because she saw a reed diffuser from the company in her bathroom, so she was trying to be thoughtful.
One Mumsnet user pointed out, “My great-uncles did this with a tea towel for over 50 years,” but someone else reasoned: “It’s possible they bought it for you because they like it and forgot that you’d given them one before. Theirs might have been accidental rudeness; if you return it, then you are being deliberately bad-mannered, which is far worse, in my opinion. Just donate it elsewhere and choose a different gift next year.”
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