What gifts that you received for Christmas this year are already in the trash?
For me, there were several dollar store trinkets that already broke, and one toy for my kids that was a huge sparkly styrofoam mess waiting to happen, so I threw it out rather than curse anyone else with it.
My sister gave us some diapers for our newborn. Already pooped her way through them.
Wow what an ungrateful crybaby pooping on your sister's gift, smh.
/s of course. Congratulations on the newborn!
Congratulations! ...about the newborn, not the amount of poop (though that's also a good sign!)
What a shitty present!
an excellent reason for those to be in the trash
Bottle of scotch. It is in the trash because I have finished it.
You really should recycle
It shall be, haven't need to the shop yet to deposit it in the glass receptical.
Christian devotional book from my aunt, I’ve straight told her I don’t read or want them but she keeps doing it
Take a picture of you burning it in a pentagram
Better to use a Bible as kindle As to use a Kindle as a bible
there were several dollar store trinkets that already broke,
My kids got two or three items each that promptly broke. Into the garbage they go.
I hate the dollar store so much. It's a waste of money and an environmental train wreck.
Not to mention the way the cheap labor works that gets those things made.
It's a grotesque waste.
They do have some of the smaller Lego sets, which is the only toy I'll buy as a last minute gift there.
Lego gets a special dispensation. It lasts (unlike some of the knockoffs) and it's a nice creative toy for kids. And adults.
we got a family-wide present of two lego sets, one bonsai tree and one bouquet of flowers, honestly really good.
And sketchy. Who knows if any particular batch of any particular product was made to safety or quality standards.
Actually they are all the same, and none of them are, that's why they are all the same. The plan was made before fire codes required updated sprinkler systems or something and since they keep reusing the same plans they all are fire hazards.
A fire fighter buddy of mine was ranting one night and I caught the tail end of the discussion.
I mentioned to a family member how much I like my garlic press. I then received a garlic press for Christmas and will certainly be regifting it.
Is your family member Google Ad Sense?
"I see you spent a week researching PSUs for your computer and I see that you finally bought one. Would you like to buy a PSU? because even though we know you bought one we'll be showing you nothing but ads for PSUs for the foreseeable future."
What kind do you have?
I have an ancient one, probably my great grandmothers, and the garlic just gets smashed into the square-but-actually-round holes and it’s impossible to get most of it out.
Mostly it makes smashed garlic, which I can do with a knife much more easily..
Regifting it because you don't need a second one? Or because the one gifted to you is of lower quality?
My parents gave me one of those 2023 Guinness World Record book. I appreciate the gesture, but it screams "we didn't know what to get you, and there were a pallet of 'em at Costco". I can see the book's appeal for a child or teenager but I'M 37.
I'll be re-gifting it to my father in-law 😎 I'm 100% sure he'll love it.
Good pooping entertainment
Yeah, back in the days before smartphones the Guinness Book was a bathroom staple, along with several volumes of Uncle John's Bathroom Readers.
Ah, so you don't know what to get your father in-law.
I’m the same age and I like browsing those when doing idle things like eating or pooping
Better give it to him soon. 2023 is quickly being forgotten.
But not forgiven
Weird that your father-in-law is a teenager.
At the other end of the spectrum: My wife and I made a minimal gifts pact. We each got each other minor crap we needed for around the house. It was perfect. No waste. No extravagance. Just stuff we were going to get anyway.
Just don't gift anything and enjoy a peaceful evening? Why does one need a special day to gift anyway?
My family did it and it was honestly amazing (obviously kids should get something if possible).
Just don't gift anything and enjoy a peaceful evening? Why does one need a special day to gift anyway?
We haven't made it that far yet. I imagine/hope we will eventually.
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, in Iceland they buy each other books and on Christmas Eve they open the books and everyone sits around reading them.
We always get stuff for the kids and the nieces/nephews, and our moms. But we haven't gotten a gift for each other in years now. We both buy something if we want it bad enough throughout the year, and it's both of our money anyway, so what's the point? We will some years get a "household gift" that's something we need or everyone can benefit from, that shouldn't go to just one kid or "you two share this and try not to fight over it, or that they will care less about. Nice air fryer one year, Nintendo switch another, etc. But nothing really needed or wanted this year so we'll probably just take a pass.
this is how my family has it set up too, everyone writes a list of some reasonable stuff they'd quite like to get anyways and we just pick a thing from each list while coordinating with each other to not duplicate anything.
Works brilliantly.
That is a great agreement. All the Christmas with none of the waste
And we finally get around to getting the crap we keep forgetting to pick up! Note pads!
Not trash, just returned to the shop. HP Smart Tank 580 printer.
Did you buy a brother instead?
My first laser printer was an HP Laser Jet MP5 that my boss threw away because 'it was noisy'. Workhorse beast printed easily another 15,000 pages before I replaced it with a color laser from Brother. That beast (purchased in 2013) has gone through 3 toner carts for CYMK, and printed high res great output in glorious color for over a decade now.
Moral of the story: HP wasn't always garbage, but they certainly are today; Brother makes a damn good printer.
I currently have a printer, also HP, but an old one (20 years).
When I'll finally need a new printer, I'll be deciding between HP and Brother. I am not sure about Linux support with Brother printers. I heard it's great, but I need to search more. I know HPLIP works well, but I also heard these new HP printers don't last long. Then there's also the thing called HP+ (not to be confused with Instant Ink) that many of those printers have, which REQUIRES HP account AND a connection to internet.
Only thing in all of these posts that deserves to be trashed.
The Canon version of that has been good for me. No subscription or anything, just fillable ink tanks.
Wow that's a big gift! Do you have a different preferred solution for printing?
Not really preferred, but I do have a printer already. A 20 years old HP PSC 1315. It still works, and I don't even know how after my USB port replacement attempt which was also my first soldering attempt, and it ended terribly. But, it does seem to make a connection, so it works for now. I didn't know what flux is, and I used the highest temperature, 520°C. As I said, no idea how it works, but it's been like that for over 2 years.
It's not perfect, but it works. It only has partial support by HPLIP, so to print in high DPI I need to use a Windows 7 VM with the drivers. That then takes 20 minutes per A4 page. The colors are quite poor and it has quite large borders. If scanning anything with color, I need to play with contrast and saturation in Scan2PDF, otherwise most colors are just invisible.
On the plus side, I found an app called NokoPrint that allows me to print from Android phone using this printer via USB.
So yeah, that smart tank would have been much better, but there would also be extra e-waste. I can deal with this printer. Actually, I got this from e-waste, so I even saved some. Also, they took it with extended warranty and some insurance, making it €207!!! I don't want such an expensive gift.
My neighbour gave me a TV. To be precise, he rushed it to me unannounced at the exact moment I was leaving to go to a party. I accepted as quickly as I could in an effort to still make my train.
It turns out it's about 15 years old and I have no use for it. He's a lovely man but I intend to post it as free to a good home then drop it at an e-recycling station if nobody is interested.
Is it a CRT? Big giant tube tv? They can fetch decent prices.
Nope, just an LCD. It'll make you feel old but 15 years ago CRTs had already lost majority market share. Sony shut down its last CRT manufacturing plants in 2008.
I know, I'd kill to hear that sweet degaussing zap again.
My grandmother got me some uranium because she knows I'm into reactors. I didn't have the heart to tell her she got scammed & it was all depleted.
Lol so you threw it in the trash? 😹
It's a made-up story. Depleted uranium is a byproduct of uranium enrichment and places that do uranium enrichment aren't even going to talk to you unless you have a host of government licenses. Depleted uranium only has a few applications like:
This makes it very hard for collectors to obtain (it can take people years) and actual samples of DU are going to be more expense than regular uranium. The story makes as much sense as your grandmother buying cubic zirconia jewelry and being "scammed" with actual diamonds.
The slinky my middle child got didn't even survive the day.
Has anyone had a slinky that survived more than a week?
The plastic ones never do, but I had a steel one growing up i played with a lot tyat lasted me a decade.
When my kids play with slinkies, they're destroyed within a day.
To clarify: the slinkie is destroyed. The children remain unchanged.
I remember growing up with several slinkies around that we didn't play with and therefore they lasted
I rarely throw gifts away, if I don't like them, I try to donate them to an organization or individual.
However, many years ago, someone got me "snow paint" which was, I'm pretty sure, literally just food coloring. You were supposed to use it to color in snow sculptures but I'm pretty sure that one found its way to the trash.
😂
Alcohol bottles (were full, now empty and in recycling, not trash)
Hooray for recycling!
I think I accidentally threw away a Starbucks gift card someone gave me, because I've been unable to locate it since Christmas :(
EDIT: LMFAO the mods removed my reply to the Scrooge below me because I said "I hope you get coal next year" XD
My partners job gave him a couple of the keg gift cards one year, it was over $100 value. We held on to them for a special occasion. We moved, it was my birthday, made plans with friends and excited to get steak paid for by his shitty employee.
Those fucking gift cards have never shown up again. Just gone into the void.
Haha wow! They also removed the one where they accused you of insulting people and the continued with a paragraph of insults towards you.
Oh, they finally removed that? Wow indeed. I didn't find anything report-worthy, but hey
Candy wrappers because I ate the candy.
My partner and I got scratch ticket packs for eachother for $38 total. I lost every ticket she won 20 dollar so we are starting the year 18 dollars short.
Don’t buy scratch tickets.
In Norway the profits are used to fund local football clubs for kids and such. It does not need to be exploitative and bad.
I was in line at a convenience store the other day, when the person in front of me bought a dozen or so scratch tickets. Normally, I wouldn't have gave it a second thought, people gamble. But what made it stand out to me was that the person made the cashier just immediately scratch the QR code square and scan the ticket. Like, the person didn't even touch the tickets. Just handed over the money, and made the cashier do the work. Not only that, but the cashier didn't even bat an eye; as this seemed like a normal occurrence to them. And the person in front of me didn't win anything, they just walked away with nothing.
So not only was it extremely sad to see this person, who is clearly addicted to gambling, waste their money. But, seeing how the industry has made it so easy and fast for someone to piss their money away was quite disgusting. These people don't even play the game on the cards now. They just scratch off the code and scan it. Just sad all around.
We call them a "stupid tax" but infrequently buying them is pretty harmless. I don't mind group lotto either it can be fun to buy in and run the numbers out over a course of a few months. There's some charity lottos I've done before.
When I was 18, I worked in a convenience store. I was behind the counter with my manager and some lady decided to throw a few bucks at some dollar scratch tickets. I was behind silly and put my finger on the middle one and said it would get her at least five dollars. She laughed and took them out to her car. A few minutes later she came in looking like she saw a ghost. She asked how I knew and I just told her that I guessed. She won exactly five dollars on the ticket I pointed out.
As someone working in my family’s gas stations for the last two decades, this is something that happens at least a few times a month for me.
9 times out of 10 the big winners have sat and played on a roll until it hits something and they move on to the next making it nearly impossible for an average, non addicted customer to get anything. The gambling addicts will spend 200k to win 10k and jump up and down like the 10k winner is going to change they life.
Customers who always share their winnings, I point them to the ticket that hasn’t hit in awhile. Customers who aggravate me and bounce in front of people like someone pissing themselves at a slot machine, I lie and tell them a ticket hasn’t hit even if it has. It’s probably wrong, but my thinking goes that the longer a particular ticket has gone without hitting, the closer it is to a winner. Someone smarter than me can probably call me an idiot on that one.
Pointing people to winners (which is a total freak thing every time I do) has paid me probably 6k in the last 20 years. If decent folks think you assisted them in their luck, they always want to share in the luck.
I’m sorry I’ve pretty much just sat and typed nothing here. Too far in to back out now. :p
Can confirm. That sparkly styrofoam stuff became a huge mess approximately 5min after opening.
Kudos to your foresight, and congratulations for the free time you saved by not cleaning up this pink and purple bullshit
Do you happen to have pictures/videos? I can't imagine what you're talking about.
Of the mess, no. But here's a pic of Satan's abomination...
It's basically tiny styrofoam balls that stick together, I think it's mostly static electricity holding it together. Once you open the package, and start manipulating the biodiversity hazard, it leaves little pieces of itself everywhere.
Much like herpes, and just as welcome. In my case, Satan was feeling extra cute so there was glitter mixed into the packaged santorum.
It's now day 6 after opening and I guarantee I'll find little purple and pink assholes around my house
I'm actually just about to celebrate Christmas in the next hour or so. My dad's health went downhill over the holidays and he needed to be moved to assisted living, so we had to delay Christmas for a bit.
I asked my family to get me gift cards because I don't like receiving a bunch of trinkets/cheap toys. And the non-cheap "toys" I want are too expensive for my family to afford. So I'd rather they contribute cash toward something I really want.
Sounds like a good plan! I hope the event is a fun time, despite the hardships
À bottle of wine, but it's now empty.
Hemingway-esque
The baked goods a lady from my dad's church gave me. I don't even know what they were; it tasted and looked like it was just a bunch of dallops of cake frosting sprinkled with almond dust. I don't really eat sweets, and these offended my taste buds when I ate one. Nobody else wanted to take them off my hands so into the trash they went.
Meringues?
Maybe? I've never had meringue as anything other than what tops a lemon meringue pie, and that's pretty fluffy and light and doesn't really taste like frosting (butter cream frosting to be specific). These treats in question were fairly dense, and a bit crumbly. Could be meringue that's dried out some, I guess.
My 2.5 toddler got a little collectible car. It somehow exploded into all its tiny parts on the first trip to the ground, which of course was shortly after opening.
Haha wow, a fragile collectible for a child that young? No wonder it broke immediately.
Not in the trash, but I regifted something a friend sent me the week before Christmas. Wrapped it in fresh paper and gave it to another friend on Christmas Eve. No-one need know...
That's funny, one of my friends gave me T-shirt with HER name on it. I don't know when I'll ever wear a shirt that says MrsDoyle. 🤷🏻♂️
Could it become your tea-shirt? The one you wear when making tea?
Sleepwear?
All the chocolate is already down the toilet, or on my waistline.
Ah, the old "either went to waste or went to waist."
I did not receive any Christmas presents this year
Folks finally listened to me when I said "get me something I'll use every day or don't bother, it's wasteful".
My mom got me a sweater, where they accidentally sewed the neck/zipper/ tag part inside out. I’m guessing she bought it online and never looked at it.
I haven't opened any Christmas presents yet. We're having a late Christmas due to crazy schedules for everyone involved.
The in-laws know I love to cook and got me a (to me, they're familiar with the author through some TV show) random cookbook. It's aimed at people who don't know how to cook and lack confidence trying. Also who cook with things like Velveeta and cream of mushroom soup.
I mostly eat from-scratch Asian food.
Cream of Mushroom soup as a helper sauce base for beef stroganoff is a valid use scenario.
I don't think it has no good use cases. But this book uses it to a fault.
Had the original floam as a kid. Smelled terrible and didn't stretch at all like in the commercials. Definitely went into the trash and I can only imagine how much worse the kind you had was. Slime or playdoh would have been better or easy to make.
My mom bought me a xlarge sweater. She must think I'm fat because I'm large at best.
Oh, idk, oversized sweaters are kind of a vibe. Extra cozy.
Yea, fully agree. Our workplace had a sweater selection one year for birthdays (the second sweater selection actually) and I deliberately took a size too large for myself. Super nice in a chilly winter day
I'm not much for receiving gifts but I appreciate fancy candies and food items I wouldn't buy for myself, and I turned most of them in to poop already.
Finished off a thing of oreo caramel with a creamy filling.
The lady and I started just buying our own gifts and profusely thanking each other for them a few years back. So. Nothing.
It's nice because there are still gifts under the tree, without the angst of shopping and the likelihood of disappointment.
This is what my wife and I do but we also usually throw in a surprise too.
My wife and I have decided to adopt the Icelandic tradition of buying each other books, and opening them on Christmas Eve. We then have a wonderful quiet read that evening.
We might buy each other small presents aside from the books, but nothing is expected or required.
Dumb cheap acrylic pyramids with silly decorations laid into the base.
Oh nooo! People still do organite? XD
Whirley-Pop.
Opend it up, realized it was a cheap piece of garbage. Went to return it to Amazon, and apparently it can't be returnd.
I love some homemade stovetop popcorn, but it is way easier to make and clean up using a regular stainless pot than that POS.
Aw man, I use one of those often. IDK what about it is garbage, it works great and hasn't given me any issues in years.
Yeah my girlfriend loves her whirleypop. But I don't know what Amazon trash they're selling now hers is quite old
You can get a new top with metal gears for cheap from their website. This thing is a tank and will never need to be replaced. Also for clean up it gets wiped out with a paper towel when cool, and placed back on the kitchen rack. Whirley-Pops are awesome. Simple does not equal cheap.
I'll have to look into the metal geared top. Mine has the plastic gears, and those have held up fine for me. Still, I wouldn't mind an upgrade.
The one I got has metal gears. They are the main point of frustration. They don't really make a full rotation without getting bound/jammed up. Slow, fast, or somewhere in-between, it always felt like I was fighting to get the only moving parts to move.
I've no problem with simple. I like simple. For me, this thing isn't simple, it's frustrating.
Maybe I just got a bad one. A lot of people seem to have an appreciation for it that matches yours. I'd be inclined to exchange it for a different one. Sadly, Amazon refuses to accept it as a returnable item.
My husband's mom bought our cats a chirping kicky toy that I guess is supposed to look kind of like a ferret. It was really shrill and annoying and they wouldn't leave it alone because the noises made them so curious. It mysteriously vanished later on christmas day lmao.
Nice!