Mother’s Day is looming, and this year more than ever people are feeling the financial pinch, so here are some ideas for unusual Mother’s Day presents that count!

1. Decluttering Vouchers

How much would mum love a new, tidy home, especially given the pressures that COVID has added -home working, home educating, extra people to stay?

We recently blogged about decluttering, and there may be some useful ideas here to help: Ten top tips for decluttering during lockdown.

As an unusual gift, perhaps you could create a little handmade, handwritten book full of vouchers for activities such as a run to the charity shop, a run to the tip, help moving furniture or even a year’s storage.

2. Tidy up for her

You could always surprise mum and do the decluttering for her rather than giving her vouchers to help her do it.

Maybe it’s my own prejudices and experience, but it would take a brave person to decide which of my own mother’s belongings are ones she really wants to have around, and which could safely be decluttered. She has some china figures that I think are horrendous, but which she loves (and are apparently valuable) and some other gorgeous bits that I love but which have no value to her at all.

If you’re cleaning up without mum’s knowledge as a nice surprise, I’d suggest popping things into storage for a while rather than getting rid of them. This is a lovely, lovely gift, but you don’t want it to backfire.

3. A home office space

If mum’s lucky enough to still be working, but from home, why not help her create a space for her to have a home office?

There are huge mental health benefits of going to work and finishing work so that we can switch off. And having a set space to leave work ‘stuff’, rather than having it all over the spaces that everyone else needs for work, school etc, means it’s easier to be organised and to pick up on yesterday’s work each day.

This doesn’t have to be expensive.

Look for a space (it doesn’t have to be a big one), with access to an electric point. All you need is a table or desk. If you don’t have one, remember that this is, we hope, temporary, so a second-hand bargain from Facebook or Freecycle and some paint may well be your best friend. (Shabby chic is all the rage.) And a chair. Make sure it’s the right height for whatever table you have.

Drawers, filing cabinets or even just a box will help keep any papers out of sight and a pin board can help keep the desk clear. It will all depend on her job and the budget you have. You could even consider a standing desk.

Don’t forget to ask mum what she needs, of course, or this may be one of those presents that gets dragged up over the dinner table with much hilarity for years to come.

And if you need somewhere to store things temporarily to create the space, easyStorage comes up at around half the price of traditional self-storage and we even come and collect – and return – your goods for safe storage.  You can get a no-obligation quote here (and book if you want to)

4. POS: Plain Old Storage

Why not just give mum the chance to put ‘stuff’ away? There are always things we want to keep for sentimental reasons, from large tables to baby clothes. They don’t always fit with the way we live now or our decorating scheme; or we could just be saving things for the day our own children get married or have children of their own.

As we’ve mentioned, easyStorage offers a cheap alternative to expensive self-storage, and picks up and returns goods.  Here’s that link again to get a no-obligation price: https://book.easystorage.com/

5. Move mum in!

This isn’t a decision that you’ll make on the basis of a blog, but if mum is elderly or unwell, living alone, especially under COVID, can be tough.

How much easier would it be to have mum under your roof than having to do that daily check in, and how much better for her?

(easyStorage can give you the space to store both mum’s belongings and your own, either on a long term basis or whilst you work out what you need.)

What a lovely way to tell mum you love her.

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