Times are hard, and the holidays coming when times are hard is like an extra helping of stress just dressed up in bows and tinsel. But Christmas always comes anyway, and of course you want your children to have some things to open under the tree. If you’re looking for ideas, one woman on TikTok — a former nanny and much beloved babysitter — is sharing her best inexpensive or free gifts for kids that she guarantees they will play with way longer than you think.
Chelsea (aka @ChelseaExplainsItAll on TikTok and “the Michael Jordan of babysitting”) has gone viral online and in my heart many times over for her advice on caring for young kids. Lately, she has been posting some seriously helpful videos focused on free or inexpensive gifts to give children this year if you’re not able to just go out and buy all the things on their wishlists. In her first video of the series, she recommends the $5 roll of craft paper from IKEA, which kids can obviously draw and paint on, but can also be used to draw a racetrack, outline each other’s bodies, and draw on clothes… you name it, really. In the second, she recommends an “invention box.”
The invention box, she says, is essentially a bin filled with “interesting trash.” Did a little plumbing project on your house this weekend? Save the scrap PVC pipe or plastic tubing. Finished the peanut butter? Wash that lid and stash it in the box. Weird shipping or product packaging, empty toilet paper rolls, old gizmos from your junk drawer — all of it can be used to build exciting inventions, she explains. “Stuff that you don’t know where it goes, it goes in the invention box,” Chelsea says. “Go in your junk drawer, go in your garage and scrounge around, and just keep your eyes peeled from now ‘til Christmas.”
She adds that you can throw in some inexpensive items to boot, but that found items (the free kind) are also perfectly good and fun! Kids love to play with things they usually don’t get to. If you want to shop for a few additions, try a roll of tape, some pom-poms, pipe cleaners, feathers, buttons, string, or twine — things to help fasten their invention together and give it some pizzazz.
So far, Chelsea’s other recommendations include thrifting supplies to make your kid a picnic kit, browsing Goodwill and Facebook Marketplace for supplies to fill a dress-up box, and putting together cheap little treasure chests they’ll use way more than you think they will.
Her videos are not only a reminder that the best gifts aren’t always just the biggest ones that cost the most, but rather the open-ended toys that can grow with our kids’ imaginations. Plus, you can kind of just keep adding to the invention box forever — there will always be more interesting trash.
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