Absurd Decor: How Useless Gifts Fill Homes and Wallets

Decor items: The home overflowing with unwanted gifts

A box of seashells. Half a dozen birthday ponchos. The reminder of Pepita’s communion. A cheese grater plate. Object by object, a house fills up. The complaint has a concrete source: an apartment undergoing renovation — finishing in December — where the owners need the exact opposite: clear furniture and two or three meaningful pieces. Instead, they receive a monthly parade of decorative objects nobody asked for, causing stress and never leaving.

The bill has two layers. The first is material: the money spent on useless trinkets. The second is emotional and harder to admit: the recipient feels bad for not appreciating them and worse for throwing them away. The result is a home functioning as a warehouse for others’ memories.

Why homes fill with unwanted gifts

Gifting is an automatic, socially cheap reflex. “I was in Alpedrete and thought of you” costs little and occupies a corner forever. The alternative proposed is swapping objects for experiences: a burger, some beers, a visit to a decent artisan fair. Same cost, zero volume, no one forced to feign excitement.

The problem arises when details multiply. A single piece is placed and forgotten; fifty, in a small apartment, change daily life. Candles, incense, small plates, tiny cushions, scented mikados, impossible figurines, and even a cheese grater plate. Some describe it as a silent invasion: the home ceases to be yours and becomes a museum of foreign gifts with a monthly layer of dust.

Gifting is easy. Placing is not. And from this mismatch is born the pongo: that object you don’t know where to put, ending up in the hallway, on the washing machine, or behind a door.

Pavor vacui: Why some can’t stand empty space

Behind much of this clutter is no malice, but a specific discomfort: the antiestéticar of empty space. The wall without a picture, the shelf with nothing, the patch of floor without a rug. Those who suffer it explain it clearly: they don’t stop until they put something on it. Hence the encyclopedias unread for forty years, the CD racks when a record cost an arm and a leg, or collections of keychains and pins.

It’s not a trait of a single generation, but it has a recognizable style: photos of relatives you never see, crocheted tablecloths sold in pairs, fridge magnets, brick-imitation prints, wicker balls that act as dust magnets. Defensible objects individually, but together, they turn any living room into an uncritical antique shop.

Some argue the opposite and have reason: the detail is appreciated, period. Bitterness over an ornament says more about the recipient than the giver. The counterargument doesn’t dispute the intent, but the volume. One detail, yes. Sixty ugly, unnecessary, large, and sometimes expensive objects in a 60-square-meter apartment is something else.

From absurd decor to hoarding: When buying becomes a problem

In the most uncomfortable part, the focus shifts from the gift to the buyer. Cases are described of five built-in closets stuffed to the brim, hundreds of pairs of shoes growing mold, and a room that couldn’t be peine because a mountain of clothes blocked the door. Continuous buying, low price, poor quality, with money sometimes not available. Those describing it from within don’t speak of whim: they speak of addiction and pathological behavior, with small amounts that sum to a fortune at month’s end.

The pattern repeats across generations. Mothers buying clothes daily, then gifting them in boxes because they have no space, cutting basic expenses while clothes accumulate. Others opt for the silent route: removing ten or fifteen bags without saying anything and hoping no one notices the absence.

What to do with useless gifts and how to clear out without starting a war

The most repeated path involves negotiation, not discretion. Throwing away without warning, as was done before with broken toys. Taking one garment or item to the bin each day. And, above all, emptying the storage room every two or three years without looking inside.

For what you want to keep, the criteria differ. A single shelf with candles and crystal vases, decent frames for photos, a vase with eucalyptus or sturdy pampas, wicker pots covering plastic ones. And cheap DIY: a headboard made from a standard warehouse board and two floating nightstands for the phone.

Minimalism: Why it’s hard to apply at home

The ideal of a clear home has enthusiastic supporters and few practitioners. Less is more requires giving up already purchased items, and that hurts. Its useful version is modest and boring: cleaning in half the time and not buying the fiftieth item. When available space is around 60 square meters, the difference between a functional home and a warehouse isn’t ideological. It’s about square footage.

The debate stalls right there, at the border: excess suffocates, and some gifts shouldn’t exist, but no one agrees where bad taste ends and serious problems begin. And while deciding, the next object is already on its way.