Mom shares smart gift-swapping hack for parents with multiple kids at home to avoid useless items

People often get stressed over finding the perfect gift for their loved ones during the Christmas holidays and it's certainly a daunting task for parents who have more than one kid. When it comes to kids swapping gifts between themselves, it's up to the parents to organize that as well. But one mom on TikTok named Alysa Barfell–who goes by @alysabarfell on the platform–has found the perfect solution to solve the dilemma of helping kids get gifts that they can exchange.

In her recent video, which went viral and decked up nearly 149k views, Barfell shares some practical gifting ideas that kids will benefit from. "Okay, how many moms out there? Moms with multiples, the minimalistic parents and the parents who are just done buying trash for their kids. Show your hands, okay? At Christmas, I have the best hack," Barfell says at the beginning of her video.

"Instead of doing the Dollar Tree where the little kids go to the Dollar Tree, they pick out really cute gifts, they like $5 to spend. I don't want the junk in my house. So, I give each kid a basket," she continues. "So, for example, I don't buy the animal fruit snacks, okay? I buy the mega box from Costco. But the one with animals on it is my son's favorite, and my daughter knows that. So, my daughter was like, 'Hey, I want to put fruit snacks in there.' Great, awesome."

Barfell further explains that the siblings are individually in charge of picking one or two snacks to put in the other sibling's snack basket and this is what she calls "sibling snack swapping." "At Christmas, we can go a little bit overboard. Because guess what? At the end of the day, they get a snack. They get snacks for the house, and they're gone. They eat them, they're gone. There's no little toys, okay?" the mom points out in her video.

There is one more benefit to this gift hack shared by Barfell. "If you do this, there's no asking for snacks the day after Christmas," Barfell remarked, imitating how she addresses her kids. "So, when they're bothering you the day after Christmas when you spend way too much time and you're overstimulated and you don't want to do anything, you just want to lay in bed, then you can ask your kids to get something from their snack basket."

Her gift-swapping hack ensures that the kids feel like they are in charge of deciding what kind of gift or snack they want to give their siblings or friends. "They're in charge of picking it out, wrapping each box, whatever package and putting it into the basket. Merry Christmas!" Barfell concluded. The comment section of her viral video was full of diverse opinions where people shared similar ideas that can prove to be effective during Christmas.

@zelensky_updates wrote, "We always have snacks in the pantry and the kids just get something when they want it. I guess this works if you only buy snacks at Christmas." @hellojenro shared, "After my mom switched us to wheat bread, I was gifted a loaf of white bread for my birthday. Best day of my life." @_.t_m._ quipped, "My parents always put an orange, a banana, two mini boxes of cereal and juice boxes in our stockings. The only ones we could open before waking up mom and dad was the stocking, so there were also a bunch of tiny brain teasers in them. We dug through the stockings, played and ate breakfast (and some candy) by ourselves, which bought them some extra sleep."