For those who celebrate Christmas, this could be easily and quickly adapted by collecting the sentiments over e-mail or telephone.

She must have been a fantastic manager to inspire such a gift.

I’m a mother of five school-ish aged kids, living in snowy Boston. My mother is in Florida. She knows I’m frugal, and dislike wasting money, even when it’s not my own.

She set up an account with the local-to-me grocery delivery service, and put on credit the price of the delivery-fee of the first few uses on her credit card.

Then, we found on-line a coupon for a free first delivery. There is no commitment to order anything. So, even if I only use it that first time, money isn’t wasted!

She called it “the gift of not having to lug the groceries up the icy steps”. This is something I’d never would have thought of set up for myself, assuming it was expensive or just… tangled up in paperwork.

It turned out to be easy and cost-effective. It’s a blessing just knowing that this is an option for the days when my car is iced under like a fly in amber.

In a similar gift, my mother made all the calls and set up a taxicab account for emergency use. This lets the family call a cab and get priority service, with the tip and cab fee billed to an account. It didn’t cost anything to set up, and didn’t entail a commitment or minimum usage.

I printed a page of business cards with the taxi company’s name, telephone number, and the account number. These were then “laminated” with packing tape, and given to each family member to keep in their wallets/backpacks.

In both cases – the supermarket delivery and the taxicab account – the gift was in doing the legwork and spending time on hold arranging the accounts.

Now, for my contribution:

We were looking for something else for my father-in-law but didn’t want to spend much more, so here’s what we’re going to do:

1) draw up a list of movies that we think he will enjoy and pay for a month or two worth of Netflix for him

2) start a Pandora (http://www.pandora.com) radio station for him with songs that we think he will enjoy, then email him the link. (He’s always complaining that he wants new music to listen to, but he doesn’t know how to find it.)

I do triathlons and spend a fair amount of time training on the roads. This gives me lots of peace of mind…

http://www.roadid.com

Water filter–for people who buy bottled water rather than tap, even though most of the bottled water is just filtered tap water.

Potted plant, obviously not good for those who would kill it. Perhaps a silk arrangement for the brown thumbs.

Personalized USPO stamps

For kids — one of the Klutz book kits

For almost anyone — something from Dover books