Stuffing Christmas Stockings
Shopping!!
Start shopping now. Even if today is December 26. If you are filling a lot of socks, you must buy a lot of stuff cheap. Start watching for good sales now.
What to Buy
Women and girls are easier to buy for than men. There are lots of inexpensive personal items-hair dodads for example, kitchen gadgets, candles, plaques and picture frames all make good stocking stuffers for women. Many of these same items also work for girls.
I find it harder to find reasonably priced stocking stuffers for men. On the average, stockings for men cost more that stockings for women. They frequently get one of those small tool kits or screwdriver sets. If the sock is for a man who has a VHS, you can often find movies or cartoons at pretty good prices. With the advent of DVDs, this isn't as useful as it used to be. DVDs don't take up as much space as VHS tapes, and sometimes they are too wide to fit easily into your stocking. Men's socks are more likeley to be filled with puzzles, games, and candy than women's.
Personal hygene items can also be good stocking stuffers and are gender independent. I don't use too many of them, but they usually provide good volume for the dollar. Also batteries, especially if the person is getting a battery driven gift.
Where to Shop
- Clearance Tables--Our local Kroger store has tables set up at the front of the store about once a month with seasonal and personal type items at reduced prices. Office Depot also has closeout or scratch and dent tables. CVS is another great place for this. Watch for discount tables at auto supply and hardware stores for those hard to find "men" stocking stuffers.
- Deep Discounters--BigLots is a great place to buy stocking stuffers, especially for hard-to-find men's gifts. Last year I found some great electrical adapters to turn one plug into three. They were reasonably large and were less than a dollar each. Dollar stores and Dollar General stores are also good for stocking stuffers. I have more luck for women's gifts at dollar stores though.
- Second Hand Stores--Second hand stores are not usually good for volume purchases, but can be a good place to find one small personal gift for each person.
- Seasonal Sales--The last couple of years Target some large $1 and $2 bins at the front of the store during the Christmas shopping season. I've found some pretty good deals in those bins.
Online Shopping
I used to do a lot of catalog shopping for Christmas. As the quantity of stockings grew, my dollars available per sock went down. Catalog shopping became too expensive. However there are a couple of catalogues I still buy from--only now I do it online. American Science and Surplus and Oriental Trading Company.
American Science is fabulous. Their product descriptions are funny and they have lots of good, cheap, volume products. This is one of the best sources around for stocking stuffers for men. They have lots of stuff you never heard of. They also have lots of craft stuff that you don't even know yet that you need.
Oriental Trading is especially good if you have small children on your list. They also have good generic items, like the squishy eyeballs mentioned above that you can use in anybodys stocking.