Dialogue: The savvy gal's way to recycle

I recently gave a talk as a small favour for a friend who had started a company. By way of thanks, I was presented with a beautifully boxed bottle of bubbly.

Weeks later I myself was in need of a thank-you gift for another friend - and I remembered the bubbly. I mean, although Id love to, I didn't really need to drink it. Thus, by "regifting" it to Friend Number Two, I could save money and the hassle of buying a present. What Friends Number One and Two didn't know wouldn't hurt them. Oh, what a savvy and practical gal am I!

Regifting - on-giving a present originally gifted to you - evokes a similar feeling to taking hotel soaps home: you feel vaguely like a cheapskate at the time but this is soon outweighed by a sense of self-congratulatory resourcefulness.

Even if we can afford to buy presents, regifting kills two birds with one stone - we save time and money and often we can find mismatched items a good home. And besides, everyone seems to do it.

Once upon a time all gifts were precious, therefore kept and savoured. Gifts were either used, stored in their boxes or proudly displayed, whatever the decor of the home. It would have been the height of rudeness to pass on a present gifted to you.

But now we have plenty of stuff and many obligations too, it makes sense to recycle gifts that are not used or indeed liked. Furthermore, we are terribly fussy about what we want to use and particularly what we want to have on display in our homes. We are not ungrateful, just concerned that things don't go.

Effective regifting is a real skill. If you are taking the plunge, there are a few things to note. First, don't try this unless you have a sharp memory. If you are doing a lot of regifting the item could easily find its way back to its original purchaser. This is why it's better to regift outside the immediate family to avoid embarrassing Christmas Day boo-boos - "Hey, I got you that for your birthday last year!"

Secondly, carefully scan all items to be regifted for any telltale signs of previous gifting. I heard of some newlyweds who, marvelling over their stash of wedding presents, unwrapped a set of glasses only to find a card addressed to another couple (the regifters). Oops.

And lastly, take care to match the gift to the recipient, or it's too easy to be sprung as a regifter. There are clues to whether you are a victim of sloppy regifting - regiftees will smell a rat when gifts from those who should know them well are suspiciously incongruous with their most distinct personality traits, interests and tastes. Like if I was given Lladro.

With Christmas coming, serious regifting behaviour will be rife. For those in the corporate world it's bonus time. Corporate gifts are sitting ducks for being rewrapped and passed on. It's therefore annoying that companies insist on having their logos blazoned on the side of an object, ruining its regifting potential.

What are they thinking - that we want to use stuff with a corporate design on it? Mind you, it's nothing that a razor blade or some fine sandpaper can't fix.

As it's safer and easier to regift items that are fairly generic, I always welcome booze and preserved foods as corporate gifts - excellent presents to pass on, they have universal appeal and can innocently slip by as original purchases.

One final word of warning: if regifting a boxed item, always open to check the contents first. Regarding the classic bubbly scenario mentioned above, note that as I was taking off the card addressed to me and replacing it with one addressed to Friend Number Two, fate urged me to open the box. Curiously, I found not a bottle of millennium edition Le Brun Cuvee, as the box suggested, but some cheap vodka from Finland. When I congratulated Friend Number One on a successful prank he exclaimed that this was not a deliberate act at all but obviously a bottle-store mix up. He was most embarrassed.

Don't worry, I told him, it's the thought that counts.