Anyone with older siblings probably discovered early in life the joy of hand-me-downs.

Your pram, car seat, high chair or some other item was broken in by your bigger brothers and sisters. And perhaps with a few years under its belt, the item is now also broken.

The giant US toy chain Toys ‘R’ Us has launched its Great Trade-In event for 2010. Parents will receive a 25% discount on new baby items in exchange for old ones (even ugly kids’ gifts) that may be well past their use-by dates and plain unsuitable for further tours-of-duty with knee-high terrorists (sorry, children).

The point of this child safety initiative is twofold: to clear the country’s basements, attics and spare rooms of unsafe baby items and to highlight the issue of child safety, pointing out that “tried” doesn’t necessarily mean “true”. This is the Great Trade-In’s third year, with over 200,000 items already being returned so far this year. The program runs until 19 September.

Hand in hand with the Great Trade-In comes the company’s Product Safety Vigilance Program which is designed to keep busy parents better informed about product recalls and keep a vigilant eye on all items their youngsters come into regular contact with around the home.

Three cheers for Toys ‘R’ Us for this community-awareness campaign, especially as it’s become  de rigueur to recycle and regift. And plus, for your chance to get rid of some god-awful baby and children’s gifts and save some money on new ones.

OK, every country has its own national quirks and characteristics. But when it comes to the wonderful world of Internet shopping, Canadians seem to be suspicious, demanding and even a touch paranoid.

Survey results released by market research company NPD Group Inc. reveals several possibilities as to why Canadians have been slower to jump on the online-shopping bandwagon than their American cousins south of the 49th parallel.

Most significantly, almost 90% of the survey’s respondents admitted that having to pay return shipping costs alone would make them less likely to make an online purchase.

But it doesn’t stop there; 51% said they were anxious about the security of online payment transactions, and 22% said having to create online accounts prior to purchase was enough to put them off.

Personally, I think the more interesting idea is not how many Canadians would baulk at having to pay return shipping costs but the fact that they have to return anything at all.

It makes more sense with clothing. But why would you return books, CDs, cosmetics or sporting goods, for example? Have they gone online shopping without reading the customers’ testimonials? Were they in a hurry?

I would rarely return it, as I’d be more likely to ahem, regift it, or sell it on eBay and chalk it up as a mistake. But maybe I too, would return something if return shipping was free.

For those of you who love a good wedding story, here’s a cracker.

A married couple in the UK who wish to remain anonymous, recently discovered that two fairly ordinary looking Chinese vases that were given to them as wedding gifts were, in fact, anything but ordinary.

After sitting on a shelf collecting dust in the couple’s Southampton home, the vases were recently identified as rare 18th century Chinese works dating from the Qianlong dynasty (”the new Ming”, according to an auctioneer). The couple had no idea of the vases’ royal connections until an antiques dealer visited their house and suggested the pieces could be extremely valuable.

He wasn’t kidding. The bewildered couple sold the vases to an overseas bidder for a whopping £500,000. They obviously had no qualms or stabs of sentiment offloading this wedding gift to a complete stranger and making a handsome profit in the process.

It just goes to show that ordinary looking gifts picked up for a few pounds or dollars at the local thrift shop can sometimes prove to be worth more than… well, than the local thrift shop itself.

Oh, and the couple’s wedding was actually 45 years ago! Do you think the vases were unwittingly “regifted” by a broke aristocrat?!

Hmmm, I really debated about including this info…

Anyway, you know how some people are well, “shit” gift-givers – well it seems that singer Ke$ha is, as well, literally.

Anyone who she considers to have wronged her in some way can expect a nicely gift-wrapped piece of dog poo in the mail for Christmas. These charming little stink bombs are courtesy of the singer’s dogs, although whether the gifts are sent with the dogs’ permission is not known.

Ke$ha had no qualms spilling the beans about this, so to speak, and she admitted that she sometimes uses her music as retaliation towards other wrongdoers. It’s hard to decide which would be worse – to receive a box of doggie doo in the privacy of your own letterbox or to have your transgression recorded for public posterity in a song.

Ke$ha is a Pisces, with Mercury (communication) and Jupiter (optimism, generosity) in Pisces. Normally this would make you rather forgiving, sweet and compassionate and highly aware of karma - especially against wrong-doers.

Unfortunately she has Mars (anger, energy) in Taurus (nature) opposite Pluto (power, taboos) in Scorpio (sex, death, destruction). When someone gets on her bad side she goes well, ape-shit, taking the particularly revengeful route of sending dog poo which would be an upsetting and disgusting gift for anyone.  

Of course, there’s always a positive spin for everything, and perhaps we should be congratulating Ke$ha for switching to gifts that are environmentally-friendly, sustainable and green.

Or in this case, brown.

If you – or more importantly, your recipients – are worried about giving or receiving gifts which are a drain on the environment, there are 8 things you could look for when deciding on their prezzie.

Some of these are interconnected, while by choosing one quality it often includes another.

Carbon offsetting – of all 8 strategies to give an environmentally sensitive gift, this one is the toughest to meet, that the company provides carbon offsets.

Energy-saver/conserver – you could choose to give something which does not require enormous amounts of energy and resources to make - such as plastic – and/or you could buy an item which protects existing resources, such as plantation wood.

Ethically produced – there are thousands of companies who buy fascinating things from artisans in developing countries, paid a fair wage for their products. Sweatshops in Malaysia don’t count.

Handmade – often, but not always falls into the ethically produced category. Something handmade is a real labour of love.

Locally made – if they have to fly it in, Mother Nature will develop even more frown lines. Bought – and made – close to home makes it very environmentally friendly, plus it keeps the money in the same community.

Natural materials – there’s something deeply satisfying and timeless about silk, cotton, wool, linen, wood, bamboo, stone, clay, copper and cane that an artificially made item will never have.

Non-toxic – kids used to die from lead-based paint on their toys and furniture. Why would you give anything that’s toxic to people or the environment? ’Nuff said.

Recycled – you can buy amazing things that have been reborn from the ashes of a discarded product. Glass and metal can be melted down and made into new pieces, PET plastic bottles can be turned into clothing, old scuba suits get to live again as laptop sleeves, while you must have seen those green motherboards made into groovy new diary covers. 

The most recycled gift of all, of course, is a regifted one.

What will they think of next?!

A New Jersey-based company called Cold Cuts Media has created a new iPhone/iPod application called REGIFT that will catalog the gifts you want to pass on. Since two in three adults have regifted at some time (I certainly have), this could prove very useful to keep out sticky social situations (such as eventually giving the gift back to the original gift-giver).

Costing just $0.99 from the ITunes App store, you can: track what you want to regift, take a shot of it, record who gave it to you, when and for what gift occasion, make notes on who NOT to give it to, categorise it, and then mark it off as “regifted” once you’ve rewrapped it and sent it on its merry way.

Just to make extra sure your regifting effort goes um, unnoticed, it even prompts you to check for receipts, engravings, cards or some other identifying factor that would indicate it had been originally given to you.

Perhaps this is one app that all couples should add to their wedding gift registry…

Everyone knows someone who’s a bit of maverick, who tries to fit in but cannot be anything other than different. Take a bow, Aquarius!

Aquarians are unusual. You’ll notice them at first glance (these guys are more likely than any other sign to be the first of a subculture: they were probably the first in their class to be one of the shocking bodgies, widgies, hippies, New Romantics, punks, goths, emos… you get the picture or at least they love dressing up as one as often as they can). Or if they seem normal, your conversation will soon reveal you’re dealing with a very different kettle of fish. Even if they dress normally and behave in socially appropriate ways, they will have a strange, rare or alternative hobby.

Many of them are wildly popular; a stack of them are on the geeky side. Anything that’s cutting-edge technology should thrill them just fine. While it’s a enormous generalisation, if you can think of most urban DJs/geeks/computer hackers as Aquarian you’ll be on the right track. They are typically a citified lot, umbilically linked to the iPhone, iPod, Skype – you get the picture.

They love nonconformity, unpredictability and a scorn for convention. They can be quite outrageous at work, and they just love teasing family, friends and neighbours with no sense of humour. Sometimes they’ll remind you of Dr Spock (curiously unemotional – in fact they rather like items to do with him, and that other guy, Darth and his mates) and at other times their ideas will be so antiquated you’ll wonder if they’ve time-travelled from the 19th century. Both sexes are surprisingly ageless; children love them because they treat them as adults or maybe it’s because most Aquarians never really grow up.

While they sound anti-social, they’re actually groupies when it comes to friends (more is better) who spread themselves thin catching up with everyone.  Anything that can help them to entertain great swathes of acquaintances is one suggestion.

As you can guess, these are not the guys to buy chintz doona sets for. Kitsch things like egg chairs, lava lamps or those fluttering fibre optic lamps (or basically anything that decorated Dr Evil’s 1960s pad in Austen Powers) are usually a hit. Many of them are humanitarians who want to make the world a better place. Some of them have a strange attitude towards money; many of them give it away (Paul Newman was a sexy Aquarius). These are the sort you could happily regift something and they’d be happy you weren’t wasting the planet’s resources.

Aquarians can be extremists (they’re very stubborn about their point-of-view) and are either soooo politically correct or a bigoted throwback to the past. They do have a good sense of humour though so you can tease them about their controversial, even unpopular causes.

Many of them are into astronomy, astrology, science and metaphysics. A telescope, a star named after them or just for fun, an acre of the moon could appeal to them.

If you’re one of the 19% of consumers who received a dud Christmas present (and you’ve managed to get hold of the receipt), you’d better get cracking if you want to return them for a refund!

While some stores will allow refunds up to a year later, many will refund goods brought in their original packaging (hmmm – how often does that happen!?) and tags up to the end of January.

Other stores won’t give you a refund at all but merely an exchange or credit for something else in their store. According to the US National Retail Federation, American retailers took back an estimated $17 billion of unwanted gifts. What’s more, 17% of retailers have tightened their return policies.

If you can’t get cash and you really don’t like the item nor feel you could regift it to another, think carefully how you could use the credit note to “purchase” another gift which will save you spending your own money. You could always select one of the items there for Valentines Day, your anniversary, birthday, Mothers Day or even for Christmas 2010.

According to a new survey, Britons have wasted £657 million on dreadful and pointless Christmas gifts – which is about £10.70 pounds wasted on bad Chrissie gifts for every man, woman and child on that little island.

 Two thousand Brits were polled by the TV channel Home to promote the launch of  new de-cluttering program called Gutted. (I think this is a fantastic name as “gutted” not only means a complete clear-out of junk to start afresh, but in English slang means terribly upset. Which is what you are when you get a rubbish present.)

So we get to watch people who have loyally kept presents they hate and never use toss them out.

The worst offending gifts were novelty jumpers (a la Mark Darcy’s one in Bridget Jones), rice cookers, fondue sets, comedy books(?), pasta makers, exercise DVDs, ice-cream makers,  liquor chocolates (oh, come on, I’d eat those!), novelty slippers and jigsaw puzzles.

What’s worse is that one in five people got themselves into debt buying gifts, overspending by £340. Men racked up more debt than women (£400 vs £310) but women took longer to pay it off.

Thirteen percent admitted regifting the badly-chosen gifts to some other sucker while 16% sold them on eBay.

Everyone gets a gift that’s not quite “them” for Christmas. So what are your options?

1. Get a refund. You can only do this if you know the gift-giver well enough that he or she would happily give you the receipt so you can get what you want (ie cash). The cleverest thing you can do for your personal wealth-building for 2010, if you get the cash, is to make sure you spend it on an anniversary, upcoming birthday or 2010 Christmas gift and then you can cross one gift off your list!

2. Regift it. I got three boxes of Guylian shell chocolates – and as much as I love them, that’s kinda overkill (on my thighs). So someone is going to get a box of them as a hostess gift for a dinner party or whatever.

3. Reuse them. Strange clothing items might be perfect for your (or your kids’) dress-up box, with especially glitzy jewellery great for decorating your Christmas tree in 11 months’ time! An ugly ceramic vase could be “planted” in the garden to hold a flowering shrub that disguises the original container. A too-fruity perfume could be fine as a bathroom atomiser!

4. Sell them. eBay estimates approximately $1billion worth of gifts are unwanted every Christmas. However, since you will be “competing” with hundreds of thousands of other sellers trying to flog the same thing, it may actually be a better time to BUY items still in their original packaging in January as you won’t get a very good price for whatever you’re trying to sell right now. Start selling next month, perhaps…

5. Donate them. Take your unwanted toys and books to the local library or children’s centre, clothing to the local shelter and so on.

6. Throw it out. In feng shui terms, there is nothing worse than keeping something you cannot stand as the quietly festering resentment you have towards the item creates a yucky pool of energy in your home. Most people can’t remember what they gave you after a couple of years, anyway…