As I'm sitting here surrounded by wrapping paper, ribbons, colorful bags and tape I'm thinking

[csziggy]

5. Gift bags are your friends!

I keep a supply of gift bags - many are Publix re-usable shopping bags. Around Christmas they stock ones that are decorated for the holidays (they are have ones with themes for other times of the year) and my husband always picks up a few for larger items. For smaller things, we have smaller paper gift bags and pre-decorated boxes (think shirt box sizes). We have a bunch of wrapping paper upstairs in the attic that is about thirty years old from the time before we stopped wrapping presents.

Another solution is for the family to draw names or have a gift exchange - a "dirty Santa" exchange can be a lot of fun: http://www.dirtysantarules.com/

In that kind of exchange, only the adults participate - each family can decide the rules - and it can cut the number of presents to a minimum. This is what my husband's family does, since with his siblings and their spouses, plus the now grown children and their spouses, they can have twenty or thirty people for gifting.

For the next generation, I was getting book store gift cards. This year I got prepaid Visas and will give to the parents with the stipulation they are to be used to buy books. Of course, I can't control this, but I will NOT buy toys for their ever increasing piles of crap the kids all have. Plus, if any of the parents need to use the cards for essentials, that is OK, too.