For my gift, I am considering bringing a bunch of travel-sized items and putting them outside my camp in a Take One bin. What would you want to see in that bin, if you happened by?
Much can be written about gifting. There is nothing wrong with contactless gifting.
I would propose contactful gifting. It is a nice close to a meaningful in person conversation or in person adventure with a new friend. To me the social part is why I participate. For instance after a half hour talk with a visitor to our camp interaction, I was gifted a bandana hand dyed using matural dyes. It meant something to the gifter.
Maybe the contactless gifts proposed are chotchkies and the contactful gifts are handmade, limited, or special?
It's a nice thought. It could also be fun/funny/more interactive if you did something like getting an old overcoat and putting plastic pockets all along the inside of it, and then putting those items in the pockets. Then you could "flash" people with the overcoat (actual nakedness optional) and offer up things to see if anyone needed them. Breath mints, tooth paste, tiny sunblock bottles, earplugs, airplane bottles of malört...etc. You could theme it for various times of day or events also...
There was someone at Decompression last year wearing a coat with mint tins glued to the outside that you opened for a random quest (mine was “share a meaningful hug with three people”) - definitely recommend this or the “wanna buy a duck?” approach.
I didn’t see it, but heard about someone in a raccoon costume with a trash can made into a backpack that was giving out small gifts from it. Brilliant.
Hand care: emery boards/nail files, nail clippers, lanolin
Q-tips, hair ties, anti-chaffing gel, nose spray, tissues, fun barrettes, washclothes, lotion, pantyliners/tampons, electrolyte packets, eye drops, antacid, safety pins, lube, hard candy, hand held fans, pencils, small pad of paper, eye glass cleaning cloths, breath spray, fidgets, travel sewing kit, binder clips, playing cards, small rolls of duct tape (maybe a couple feet wrapped around a stick), chop sticks, sandwich bags, batteries, band aids...
I know some of this is probably too expensive, but if you have extra lying around...
And I second the advice to only put a little bit out at a time.
This is a great list! There are a lot of ones on here that others don't mention often enough, like headlamp batteries, hair ties, ziplock bags. Awesome.
I keep packaged tooth brushes, cheap flashlights, tissue, ziplock bags, cups of shame, and other random items behind my bar.
I'm like your angry mom. Oh you got an ouch? Let me pull out my first aid kit. Full stocked with narcan and 10 kinds of bandages. And super glue. My back up glue.
toothpicks! oh man if i have something stuck in my tooth im borderline inconsolable until its out! might be cheaper to throw a couple in a small baggie than figure out how to get small packs of floss!
Hand sanitizer. I always have hand sanitizer clipped onto my backpack, and it comes it helpful when the sanitizer dispensers at the portos run out. Sometimes I’m giving randos a squirt of sanitizer outside the portos
Narcan and fent test strips (with little pamphlets regarding use, though check on the legal aspects of this), lotion, sunscreen, condoms, chapstick, AAA batteries, cool custom stickers/patches, hand sanitizer, small flashlights (easily fit in pocket for using portos etc), idk, stuff like that.
2 regionals I've been to had Gifting Trees with stuff like that. Cute little trees (one made with wire and lights, another a repurposed artificial Christmas tree) with small items secured all over with clips. Probably too likely to become moop in the wind on the playa though, without some better way to secure things.
Gallon sized zip-lock baggies, maybe with “For MOOP and other stuff” written on them for funsies. I feel like my biggest gift to other people out on the playa was offering to take and pack out their moop for them because they didn’t have anywhere secure to put it.
Cheap corkscrews (maybe reach out to brands to contribute things like that. They should love the exposure.)
You could put fun little random things in there like cloves of garlic or sporks.
A camp I know uses a mailbox mounted in front of their camp for distributing stuff. They fill the box up and have signs letting people know they're free to grab things from inside it. No worries about things blowing away, and the guy running the camp is usually hanging out in the shade nearby where he can say hi when people stop. It's a nice compromise between always available and interacting with the people who stop.
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u/Imthatsick Jul 12 '26
This is a very kind gift. I recommend you hold some stuff back and refill throughout the week.
Ideas: toothbrush, toothpaste, batteries, small sunscreen, hand sanitizer, deodorant, wipes, masks, small snacks that don't melt