Are you looking for a few cheap neighbor gifts (or coworker) gifts? You have like 30 neighbors and no money, but you don’t want to be the only person in the neighborhood who doesn’t participate in the ‘neighbor-gift’ tradition. Who wants to be the neighborhood pariah?
I get it!
So I’ve compiled some fantastic and very cheap neighbor gift ideas for you! You’ll find everything from edibles to home decor, and most of them for less than a buck.
Because when I say ‘Dirt Cheap Neighbor Gifts’, I really mean it!
Ultimate List of Cheap Neighbor Gifts:
Just Slap on a Free, Printable Tag
Who has a whole lot of extra time during the holidays to handcraft hundreds of beautiful, homemade gifts for all of the neighbors? Not me! These cheap neighbor gifts are all about buying a case of things and slapping on a printed tag. All of these make perfect cheap, neighbor gifts!
1. Paper Towel Roll with a beautiful, thoughtful poem (free printable!) from Crafts Redesigned. Just buy a huge, bulk package of paper towels, affix the printable, and deliver them to your neighbors. Easy, peasy!
2. Clorox Wipes are such a useful gift, especially this time of year! With all the cold and flu viruses going around these can help keep your family healthy. The cute (free printable!) poem by Free Time Frolics makes it extra cute AND easy!
3. Flashlights are such a useful gift to keep in your nightstand or the glove compartment of your car! I love the cute star poem that accompanies these amazing easy neighbor gifts!
4. Redbox Movie Gift is a bit over a buck, but oh, so fun! Redbox will let you purchase a gift movie, you write it on the cute, free printable from Over the Big Moon, and tie to a bag of microwave popcorn. Find a coupon or purchase the popcorn in bulk from Costco and you can get them for less than 50 cents!
5. Bag of pasta. One year we gave out bags of pasta with “We hope your holidays are filled with endless PASTAbilities!” Almost every year I find bags of pasta for only 50 cents each at the caselot sale. What a useful and easy neighbor gift!
6. Dollar store platter. I love her witty tag that says, “When out on the lawn I heard such a clatter, I sprang from my bed and tripped on this platter.” Her post is also full of easy neighbor gift ideas that you will love!
7. Muffin Mix with ‘You’re gettin muffin for Christmas’ is such a fun play on words. And it couldn’t be easier! Just buy a case of mixes and tie on the cute gift tags.
8. Buy bottles of Joy dish soap from the dollar store and affix this free, printable ‘May Joy be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through’ gift tag.
Edible, Cheap Neighbor Gifts
Edible gifts are very inexpensive, but extra thoughtful, because they are made by you, with lots of love!
1. Holiday jam gift idea with the recipe and free printable labels from lil luna.
2. Hot Cocoa on a Stick from Thirty Handmade Days. I love how easy these look and the adorable packaging!
3. Orange Cranberry bread from Your Homebased Mom is extra festive baked in paper loaf pans and embellished with a sprig of pine. You could even include the recipe on the gift tag!
4. Cookie Dough with free printable from Cupcake Diaries ‘We could all use a little extra dough this time of year’ tag. You don’t even have to bake it!
5. Candy Cane Popcorn looks so festive gifted in cheap, red, disposable containers, topped with the free, printable label you can download at I Heart Naptime.
6. Moose Munch from Pondered, Primed Perfected is delicious and indulgent, despite being one of the cheapest of all cheap neighbor gifts. Popcorn (if you buy unpopped kernels and pop it yourself) is less than twenty cents per gallon plain, and not too much more once it’s topped with butter, caramel and chocolate.
7. Christmas Crack from the Country Cook. This addicting toffee is made with saltine crackers! No kidding!
8. Hot cocoa mix in a jar from the Frugal Girls. To make the gift even more frugal, I would gift it in a ziploc bag instead of the jar. You could print a cute label on cardstock, fold it over the top of the ziploc bag and staple it to pretty it up.
9. Homemade Sea Salt Caramels from 12 Tomatoes will be a very popular neighbor gift! Yum!
A Million Yesses to Homemade Fudge
Why did I neglect to include the fudge with the other edible homemade Christmas gifts? Because fudge deserves it’s own category! Look at all these yummy varieties! Are you drooling yet? I know that everyone is trying to be ‘healthier’ and I’ve noticed that neighbor gifts are following that trend. And yet I guarantee that nobody will turn up their noses at a plate or tin of homemade fudge!
1. Homemade Old-Fashioned Fudge looks crazy rich and delicious! Your neighbors will adore you! You will be the fudge hero of the neighborhood! This kind of fudge doesn’t use marshmallow cream.
2. This festive Candy Cane Fudge looks amazingly easy! And isn’t it pretty?
3. This easy Mint Fudge recipe combines two dark chocolate layers encasing a white chocolate later flavored with peppermint. The beauty of this recipe is that is doesn’t require any candy thermometer and is super quick to make!
4. Eggnog Fudge combines two holiday classics, eggnog and fudge! What a yummy, cheap neighbor gift!
5. Using only five ingredients and less than 20 minutes, you can whip up this festive Caramel Fudge.
6. This Peanut Butter Fudge recipe uses on four ingredients and looks incredibly easy!
Practical & Useful, Cheap Neighbor Gifts
So many people follow different diets these days. You’ve got the vegans, the gluten-free crowd, the dairy-free families, the low-carb folks, the sugar-free health nuts, and the families with allergies. Practical, useful, non-edible gifts make great, cheap neighbor gifts for all of these friends!
1. Cute, Christmasy notepad. “Just a note to wish you a Merry Christmas.”
2. Disposable Dishes from My Name is Snickerdoodle. “Wishing you lasting Christmas cheer. Let the dishes be on us this year!”
3. Hand Soap with a free printable tag from Kristi at I Should Be Mopping The Floor. “Spread cheer not germs.”
4. Batteries are essential on Christmas morning. Your neighbors will appreciate this practical gift. “Hope you have enough energy to make it through the holidays! Merry Christmas!”
5.Santa-tizer from Paper Jewels
6. Tissue from Red Chandelier. “We tissue you a Merry Christmas and a Healthy New Year.”
Cheap Neighbor Gift Packaging
Now you just need a few ideas for cheap ways to package all of these cute gifts. We don’t want the wrapping to break the bank after we’ve so carefully kept down the cost of the gift. The way a gift is presented can make or break the gift!
1. Pillow Boxes from Picklebums are such a cute way to wrap small food items or trinkets! I love that you can find and use your own papers to create them!
2. You can turn your old Pringles containers into Creative Cookie Packages! A Baker’s House blog will show you how.
3. I love that this cute Gift Box is just an upcycled cereal box. It doesn’t get any better than free!
4. Upcycle old newspapers into lovely wrapping paper for your gifts. You could also use old sheet music or kraft paper.
5. Turn a paper sack into reindeer gift wrap for popcorn or other yummy goodies.
6. A beautiful DIY cake plate is an extravagant (though inexpensive) way to deliver a plate of goodies to a neighbor! I made about 60 of these last year with cute, clearance dishes (only 59 cents each!) from Target! I just glued bowls to the bottoms of matching plates, so each cost me $1.20. Just add some goodies and wrap the whole thing in cellophane.
7. DIY gift bags can be made of any paper (newspaper, gift wrap, sheet music…) you have on hand.
8. Make any style or size box you need with these 7 free box templates.
Or you can buy a roll of cellophane and some curling ribbon from the dollar store to wrap your gifts inexpensively. Anything looks cute wrapped in cellophane.
Have fun finding, preparing and delivering those cheap neighbor gifts! I hope these ideas save you lots of money!
Pin these cheap neighbor gift ideas for later!
Great ideas! Food gifts are always my go-to. I love baking during the holidays, so it’s fun and easy for me to package up a bunch of food for all my neighbors and co-workers to give as gifts.
Sounds yummy! I’m sure they all eagerly await your neighbor gifts!
That Redbox idea is genius! Seriously amazing.
I loved that cheap neighbor gift idea, too!
Oh seriously I love these ideas! I’m always looking for ideas!!
Me, too, and that’s why I created this post! Sometimes easy, cheap neighbor gifts can be really hard to think up!
These are so much fun!! Haha! I love the PASTAbilities idea! Haha
Thank you! It’s kind of fun (though often difficult!) to come up with neighbor gift ideas!
All of these ideas are AWESOME! You really have my wheels turning now and I am getting ideas for Christmas. I always plan to have all of my gifts bought early, but that never happens. I love the ideas for “just add a tag”. These are perfect for those last minute gifts or for when people drop by and you need a gift handy.
We have a neighbor who never actually delivers his neighbor gifts. Instead, he just keeps them in a basket in his foyer closet and as each neighbor drops their gifts off, he hands them his gift, too. I think he’s brilliant!
These are all really cute ideas, and good for co-workers too. I like all the gifts you can just add a printable tag too; that platter one is too funny and I’d personally like the Redbox/Movie night one! And yum, fudge. You can’t go wrong there.
-Lauren
Thanks, Lauren! I agree with you that the ‘just-add-a-tag’ gifts will make great neighbor gifts!
Homemade for all my neighbors is always welcomed and kind of expected now. They love all the homemade goodies packaged up all nice and pretty.
You make the best goodies, Candy, so I’m sure your neighbors really look forward to your Christmas Neighbor gifts!