Rookie mom tip: stock a birthday party shelf

The frequency of birthday parties, once your children are in daycare or school, can be overwhelming. That’s why I maintain a very low price point for gifts (higher for a good friend or a cousin) and try to implement efficiency measures like buying multiples.

We keep a shelf in the garage filled with potential birthday party gifts in an effort to avoid last-minute dashes to the toy store with kids in tow on the way to a party.

If I take my daughter to the toy store with me before a birthday party — and I try not to do that — I often confuse her by buying whatever we pick in triplicate or even quadruplicate. But I’m thinking that if Sabine will enjoy a headband-making kit, so will Joey (a girl) and Zoe and Chloe. Yes, those are really the names of my daughter’s good friends.

My husband is particularly good at keeping our birthday party stash stocked because whenever he orders online, if he needs to get to a certain shopping cart value to get free shipping, he’ll throw in a couple of extra rubber footballs or packs of Pokemon cards that my son can give as birthday gifts.

Art supplies, puzzles, and outdoor toys like balls and stomp rockets rank very highly on my go-to birthday party gifts.

I try not to stress about buying a unique gift for my kids’ schoolmates. I figure that a child who is having a party with 10 friends is receiving so many gifts, they can hardly deal with it. A book or a new set of markers will be used eventually. Once we gave a birthday boy a headlamp, which I still maintain is one of the coolest things for a kid to own, and my own child felt disappointed by the reaction of the crowd during gift-opening to his headlamp contribution. I’d still argue that this Batman headlamp for $9.99 is a great gift. (Comes in Hello Kitty and Monster High flavors, too.)

Do you have any guidelines or go-to gifts?

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Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.