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So many unwanted Christmas gifts remain gathering dust – but binning them just fills me with guilt

Martin Lewis, the moneysaving expert and possibly the country’s most influential person right now, has had something to say about present-giving. Mindful of the cost of living crisis, he’s calling for us to sign up to what he’s calling pre-nups. Here Nups is an acronym for No Unnecessary Presents. As he puts it: “The best gift is the gift of releasing people from the obligation of having to buy for you.”

He’s undoubtedly right, but not in the case of those people who don’t want to be released from the obligation of buying presents. In my experience, there are many who feel this way. Giving is often more about the giver than the receiver, in that they will get more gratification from giving the gift than the giftee will get upon tearing open the wrapping paper.

Indeed, the givers will doubtless be insulted by the very notion that they are only giving because they feel obliged to do so. They will insist they are giving out of love, which may well be true, but is why I find it so hard to deal with.

As I have written before, I am sick of stuff. I have more stuff than I want, need or have room for. Very little of it is fit to be sold; some could be given away to charity shops, but some just needs binning, and I can’t bear filling any more landfill than I have to.

Related: Homemade Christmas gifts that show you care without breaking the bank

The biggest and most problematic category of stuff, though, is the gifts. Each one, be it a book, a trinket, a jokey thing, a voucher, an ornament or whatever, carries some emotional weight. It feels ungrateful, disrespectful and plain bad karma to get shot of it. If the gift is in use, this obviously doesn’t apply, but the majority aren’t. They remain gathering dust for ever, or until I forget who gave me something, at which point I don’t feel as bad about letting it go.

The more thought that has gone into the gift, the harder it is to bear. A close friend once thought long and hard about what to get me for Christmas and settled upon a device for engraving things. I couldn’t think of a single thing I wanted to engrave. I was nonplussed at the time and remain so. In the end, she took it away and it has not been spoken of since. The guilt is terrible.

And the closer the person is to you, the worse it is. Ages ago, my dad bought me a trouser press. It is never used and is an awkward, angular thing to hide away. Yet, it will long outlive my dad, and me too. I would like to say I hope my kids are harder of heart and refuse to keep it, but I’d still like it to go to a caring home eventually. Perhaps the answer is, in the interests of not lumbering my kids, to demand all my precious, unwanted gifts are buried with me. It will have to be a big plot, unless of course my stuff and I could all be incinerated together.

As Christmas comes, I’m filled with fear about the fresh hell of incoming gifted stuff. As a younger man, I would laugh in despair at some of the stuff my mum gave me, because it was so mundane. Now, I’m forever grateful. The ball of string, the bottle brushes, even the roll of Sellotape. All so useful and, what’s more, every time I use them, I think fondly of her. Now, I’m excited, even fascinated, to see what she comes up with this year. As it happens, I’ve just realised I’m out of Blu-Tack. I do hope she reads this.

• Adrian Chiles is a Guardian columnist