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Putting together gifts for parents can be tricky. What do you get the people who seemingly have everything they want? Gift giving can get even harder if your parents are working to declutter their home because you don’t necessarily want to give them more possessions to hold on to.
Use this guide whether you are putting together gifts for the holiday season or simply want to give your parents something nice. Here are six unique gifts for parents to consider.
1. A Video and Photo Scanning Gift Card
Give your parents the gift of cherished memories by covering the cost of their photo-scanning and video conversion project. You can easily buy a Memory Fortress gift card and send it to your parents wherever they are – whether they are right down the street or across the country.
Working with a photo-scanning and video conversion company is easier than completing this project on your own. Your parents won’t have to learn how to use a photo-scanning app and won’t have to invest in video conversion software. There are multiple other reasons why a Memory Fortress gift card is a great gift for parents:
- Our scanning services actively reduce clutter, while many gifts create it.
- Your parents can digitize their memories to save space while downsizing.
- You are providing a service that helps them save time.
- They can relive family memories while organizing photos and videos to ship to us.
This is also an opportunity to protect your memories from harm. Even if something happens to your print photos and VHS tapes, you will have the digital copies saved in the cloud.
2. Travel and Vacation Gifts
Travel has become a popular activity across multiple generations, including older Americans. One survey of 2,000 adults found that 35% of Americans want to travel when they retire. This activity was the most popular answer, even beating out spending time with family at 21%. This data makes finding gifts for parents easy – all you have to do is support their love of travel.
Think about the types of trips your parents take or places they have wanted to go. For example, if your parents love going on cruises, pick up a gift card for one of their favorite cruise lines. If they love camping, research activities in an area they could potentially visit. You could help your parents camp by the Grand Canyon or ride horses through Yellowstone.
You don’t have to pay for the entire trip but you can contribute to their travel plans. If you aren’t sure where your parents want to go, opt for an airline or hotel gift card so they can choose a destination that works for them.
3. Learning Opportunities
There’s a growing cohort of older Americans who are returning to school once they retire. They aren’t trying to grow their skills or re-enter the workforce, they simply have a passion for learning. If you notice that your parents are passionate about exploring new ideas and expanding their knowledge, look for ways to help them learn.
This doesn’t mean they have to attend a nearby college or university. Look at courses offered at community centers, workshops at various museums, and other informal learning opportunities for people who want to explore new hobbies. One parent might enjoy a six-week watercolor painting course while another gets scuba-certified down the street.
If your mom and dad embrace a love of learning, you will always have gifts for parents on hand. You can continue to fund their education and curiosity to learn new skills.
4. Family Activities
If you have a hard time coming up with gifts for parents, it could be because receiving presents isn’t their love language. Some people feel loved when they receive gifts, but other people feel loved when others spend quality time with them. Brainstorm some gifts that allow you to spend time with your parents. You can also involve other members of the family, including your siblings and kids. Here are a few family activities that focus on quality time:
- Attending a sporting event
- Spending the morning hiking in a nearby park.
- Preparing and eating a meal together.
- Watching a play or musical together.
- Assembling a puzzle on a rainy afternoon.
You can easily see how these activities can become gifts for parents. For example, you can buy your parents tickets to a baseball game which then becomes a family outing. You could also buy a puzzle for your parent and promise to assemble it with them.
5. Fitness Credits or Memberships
Staying physically fit is beneficial at any age, but is particularly important for people who are getting older. Improving muscle definition can help prevent injuries while also maintaining mobility. Consider tapping into physical fitness when thinking about gifts for parents.
For a few ideas, buy your parent a membership to the local gym where they can take classes throughout the week. You can cover the costs of a few personal training sessions so they can learn how to work out different muscle groups.
Try to find fitness opportunities that are also fun. Activities like Zumba, yoga, and water aerobics tend to be more enjoyable, which means your parent will look forward to this gift. Plus, if your parents are physically healthy, they are more likely to keep living an active, happy life.
6. Mementos From Their Childhood
Not all gifts for parents need to be expensive or complicated. Small mementos can trigger powerful memories, even if your parents haven’t thought about them for decades. Research the childhood of your parents and learn about their adolescence and early adulthood. This can give you ideas for small gifts that might surprise them.
For example, you can order some vintage candy that they enjoyed while growing up that might not be on the shelves anymore. You can order food from a mom-and-pop shop that was popular where they grew up. By searching online, you might find old photos and postcards from where they used to live.
These gifts show that you listen when your parents talk about their experiences. Small gifts can have big impacts.
Let Memory Fortress Help You Find Gifts for Parents
Our team at Memory Fortress knows how hard it is to find gifts for parents. We meet with customers all the time who want to come up with gifts that their parents can use. We also sometimes have a hard time with gift ideas for our own families.
If you aren’t sure where to start on this list, reach out to our team to talk about photo-scanning and video conversion. This is a practical and efficient gift idea that your parents will appreciate for several years. We are happy to talk more about our services and help you buy a gift card for anyone in your life.