My partner and I really love decorating our little apartment and we have a very specific look: clean, minimalist, uncluttered. It’s an aesthetic but also a necessity – we live in a cupboard. Our families (who all have the luxury of space) continue to give us gifts that are really not anything we would ever chose for our home — large kitchen gadgets, wall-hangings bought on their travels, paintings from tourist shops and faux plants. It’s a really sweet gesture because they know we like decorating so they think we’ll like decor gifts and I just don’t have the heart to throw anything out. We used to have a box of “gifts” that we’d take out and stage right before that person visited, but it felt like that just invited more gifts. Now we don’t display the stuff and if they ask, we make up some excuse about “still figuring the decor out.” Is there a way to stop the flow of decor gifts without hurting anyone’s feelings?

Sincerely,

Enough Already