If your office is like most offices, you find yourself inundated with treats and sweets during the holiday season. Vendors send towers of gourmet fudge, and couriers bring barrels of popcorn and cheese. Co-workers bake Christmas cookies and brownies. Before long, the sugar high wears off, energy levels plummet, and everyone’s clothes fit a bit tighter in the afternoon than they did in the morning.
This holiday season, share a refreshing gift with your colleagues – one that doesn’t have to be eaten to be appreciated. Your co-workers will thank you for being creative and generous, and for resisting the impulse to bring another gift of food.
Fun office supplies
Bring color to the supply closet with vibrant office supplies that you and your co-workers can all use and share. Brightly colored Post-It notes, paper clips, rubber bands, pens, labels, tags, and file folders will make work seem more like fun. Post a holiday card on the door to the supply room, inviting one and all to enjoy. You’ll smile next summer when you run across a neon green paper clip in a boring manila file.
Handmade knitwear
If you know how to knit or crochet, buy discount yarn throughout the year and make simple scarves or caps for your colleagues. Learning to crochet is easy, so try it if you enjoy crafts. Some of the big box discount stores have clearance events where brand-name skeins of high quality yarn sell for one, two, or three dollars apiece. With a simple crochet hook or a pair of knitting needles, you can make gifts for the entire office while you watch TV during the year. Give these items as individual gifts, or bring a box full in during the holiday season, letting everyone pick an item for their own.
Fun and games
Is there a break room or kitchen at your workplace with common table or countertop space? Bring a set of dominoes, cards, board games, crossword puzzle and Sudoku books or jigsaw puzzles that you and your colleagues can enjoy before work or during the lunch hour. Shop for items that won’t take up much room when they are stowed away.
Lending library
Bring used magazines, paperbacks and audio books to the office that you would otherwise have discarded or given away. Encourage others to do the same. Let everybody know that the materials are free to be borrowed, and encourage others to bring their cast-offs to build an office lending library. Don’t let the book-swap turn into a dumping ground. Recycle stale material when it starts to pile up.
Holiday decorations
Adding Christmas stockings, artificial greenery, twinkling lights, and paper snowflakes to the office decor is an affordable way to share holiday cheer. A modest investment in these decorations, especially at the end of the season when everything is on sale, is a great gift to share with colleagues. Set aside some time before or after work to put up the decorations and take them down for storage.
The gift of giving
Nothing is more rewarding than helping others less fortunate than yourself during the holiday season. Work with a local agency to “adopt” a needy family for whom the office can buy gifts and provide holiday meals. Organizing this endeavor is a gift that demonstrates your maturity and leadership skills – and gets the attention of management. Similar alternatives include arranging a Saturday volunteer shift for colleagues to work together serving meals at a soup kitchen or sorting perishables at a food bank, or wrapping gifts at the one of the gift-wrapping fundraiser stations at the local mall.
The holiday season can bring too much of a good thing when sweets and rich food overwhelm the workplace. Instead of bringing more food and contributing to the problem, give creative gifts that the office can share during the holidays without adding extra pounds in the process.