For years now, we’ve asked our families and gift-giving friends to please stop sending us presents. “We don’t need anything,” we’ve suggested, quietly and politely. “There isn’t even anything we really want.”

Still, the gifts have continued to come. Socks. (We have drawers full). Sweaters and “fun” T-shirts. The ever-changing electronic picture frame. Cute wall hangings. An Alaskan ulu. A fleece jacket. Fruitcake. The seemingly impossible-to-deter gift boxes from Harry and David, or from Hickory Farms. Some people just insist on continuing to send presents, even though our requests for them to stop have changed from gentle to more forceful.

“I just love to give gifts,” says one of my college friends, who in reality just seems to love to shop and buy. “It just makes me happy.”

It’s hard for me to imagine the joy of giving presents to people who don’t want to receive them.

We’ve asked the people who insist on giving gifts to consider spending the money in another way, such as donating to causes we support — Doctors Without Borders, gifts for children in foster care, environmental protection groups, animal shelters, or their local food pantries: “Just give it to a cause that you know we would support and that you also support.”

Still, some gifts keep coming.

Many of the gifts we receive now linger for only a few days before we move the unwanted new slippers or earrings on, to The Salvation Army or to Goodwill, or put them in a box for regifting. Sometimes we eat the Harry and David apples before offering the too-expensive crackers and cheese to neighbors or acquaintances who might really enjoy them.

Some relatives seem relieved, even grateful, for our requests to stop sending us presents. I’m sure that for my father and stepmother, the year-long quest for appropriate gifts, plus the wrapping and mailing, for the always increasing number of children, grandchildren and, now, great-grandchildren, has long since passed from fun, to requisite, to onerous.

We balance our desire to stop receiving unneeded items by our decision to stop sending gifts that we know other people don’t really need. Of course, there are exceptions. We buy presents for the children in our families. It’s fun to choose useful gifts for young adults who are starting out on their own and can actually use a skillet or spatula, or who would really welcome some pairs of warm socks.

And sometimes we give small gifts of homemade items, like cookies and homemade bread, or jam, or smoked salmon. But it just seems unreasonable, and wasteful somehow, to send gifts to other people who also don’t really want or need them.

Some family members have been so pleased by the idea of being freed from needless gift-giving that they, in turn, have asked others who feel they must give to donate instead. My father volunteers to cook free meals for a food pantry in his own community and has requested that we make donations to that program. My husband’s son has young children and appreciates donations to a program that provides free books to young children, “Books First.”

All of us have found it liberating to escape from the stress of receiving or finding, buying and giving useless gifts. The donations are easier and less anxiety inducing. We prefer money be spent for causes we care about. We don’t have to think about the waste of natural resources, the unnecessary use of plastic and other petrochemicals, or the environmental impact of the gifts we don’t give or receive.

And we are thrilled to know when even small donations have been made in our name or on our behalf to causes we genuinely support.