New homeowners often don’t know what they’ll need to make their lives easier and more convenient in their new home.
Most housewarming gifts include plants, bottles of wine, or gift baskets. While these are sweet gestures, they don’t reflect the practical needs of a first-time homeowner.
Giving one of these weird housewarming gifts may seem a little odd at first, but the homeowner will likely use these household items for a long time:
1. Label Maker
A handheld label maker is truly a gift that keeps on giving. These portable, battery-operated devices make it fun to organize a new home.
They can be used to label pantry storage containers, kids’ toy bins, home office files, television remote controls, kids’ lunchboxes, circuit breaker switches, on/off settings for lighting and sprinkler systems, nail and screw bins in the garage, and a whole lot more.
Include a handful of replacement label rolls in your gift because your recipient will find a hundred more uses.
2. Air Compressor
You can find portable air compressors suitable for gift-giving in the camping section of big box stores and sports equipment stores.
Air compressors can blow out things and appliances that need to be cleaned but shouldn’t get wet, such as coffee and spice grinders, food mills, home workshop carpentry equipment, and car engines.
It’s a tool a homeowner will use repeatedly and thank you whenever they do.
3. Shop Vac
A wet/dry shop vac is something every homeowner needs, and you’re just the person to give one.
Wet/dry shop vacs are ideal for soaking up water from carpets after plumbing leaks and overflows, light basement flooding, and vacuuming up larger chunks of debris from home remodeling projects that a home vacuum is ill-equipped for.
Placed on the reverse blower setting, the shop vac is perfect for blowing garage floors clean and powerful enough to blow away outdoor debris from driveways and walkways, such as leaves and light branches.
4. Slow Cooker
Most younger generation new homeowners won’t have the proper appreciation for the humble slow cooker.
Commonly associated with grandmothers and old-fashioned ways of doing things, the slow cooker is essential to a homeowner’s happy existence.
After a day spent painting rooms, hanging curtains, and arranging furniture, imagine the exhaustion of preparing a healthy meal or the disappointment of ordering junk food delivery.
With your slow cooker gift, tired new homeowners can sit down to a wholesome, hot meal that practically cooked itself.
5. Cookbooks
Speaking of cooking, most new homeowners will be anxious to break into that brand-new kitchen they were so picky about when they selected the home they purchased.
A gift of one or more classic, time-tested cookbooks from history’s finest cooks will be cherished forever.
Suggestions include Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” volumes I and II, and “Martha Stewart’s Cookbook of Collected Recipes.”
The next time you’re invited to a housewarming, wow your gift recipients with one of these weird but beneficial gifts they didn’t even realize they needed.