Stuffing Christmas Stockings
Planning Your Shopping
Before You Shop
Trace the outline of your sock on a piece of paper. Cut out the tracing and take it to the store. Use the tracing to help determine if the item is too big to fit in your sock. (The store won't like it if you take a sock in the store and put stuff in it to see if it will fit.) Its very annoying to buy that perfect stocking stuffer off a no returns clearance table only to find out it won't fit in your stockings.
What Makes a Good Stocking Stuffer
Number One Criteria-high volume/$. My goal is to fill each sock for between $10 to $15 each. This means that gifts should be as large as possible, without being too large to fit in the sock. Each sock should have one fairly large and cheap item. Bubble bath is a good example of a filler that can be had inexpensively, but that will fill a good chunk of the sock. This is good for women and children of all ages. I have not found a universally appropriate volume filler for men. My stocking stuffer items tend to average under a dollar.
Remember that you will also need some smaller items to fit in the toe and in the bend of the sock. I frequently buy hersheys kisses and Christmas nougats for the toe.
Most of your stocking stuffers should be bought in large quantities. If you are filling 20 socks, don't hesitate to purchase two dozen of an item that comes in dozens, as opposed to one dozen. Put the extra four back for next year or for when you need a last minute Christmas sock. One year I bought a bag of 100 squishy glow in the dark eyeballs. Everyone loved them, and no one complained when they got them for several years in a row. I have a fairly large section of my pantry devoted to stocking stuffers.
Personalize it
I usually try to include one personal gift in each stocking. Something that made me think of the person. For instance, chocolate golf balls for the golf pro in the family or an angel light pull for my angel collecting aunt. The rest of the sock gets filled with more generic items. I do try match the stuffers with the individual's circumstances. When my brother was setting up housekeeping, his sock was filled with many of the same items that the women got--kitchen untensil type stuff, because it was stuff he could use. But now those items go in his fiance's sock.