From sauce packets to empty gelato containers, there are many helpful presents for the crusty hikers in your life that value precisely nothing.
When your pals are trash, typically trash is probably the most considerate present. (Photograph: Illustration: Adam Roy; Background: Dmytro Chelpanov / iStock; Merchandise: Mark Weiss / Zoe Gates / Mockup Graphics)
Printed December 12, 2025 12:24PM
What do you get the one that has nothing—and likes it that manner? Via-hikers, backpackers, and different hippie granola types typically show a vacation conundrum as a result of they swear they don’t need materials issues. (The true reality is that they simply need cash for his or her subsequent journey, nevertheless it’s exhausting to wrap a Venmo transaction and put it underneath the tree.) What’s a hand-wringing relative to do?
The excellent news is that yow will discover an ideal present with out having to topic the one you love to the consumer-capitalist machine—or spend any cash on the ungrateful bum. These 10 presents are sensible, stunning trash, similar to the folks you’ll be giving them to.
A Tortilla-Sized Zip-High Bag
Whereas any zip-top bag with intact corners is a prized possession among the many hiker trash set, larger is usually higher. On the path, gallon-size luggage are price their weight in gold. Sure, you would get them a brand-new set of extra-sturdy freezer luggage. However let’s be sincere: They’re in all probability not going to put on deodorant to your vacation operate, irrespective of what number of occasions you ask them to. A single, used tortilla bag is healthier than they deserve.
Smartwater Bottles
Lighter than a Nalgene, slimmer than a Gatorade bottle, and all the time inexplicably going lacking, a hiker’s Smartwater bottle is virtually invaluable. That makes it all of the extra shocking that they’re so reluctant to spend simply $2 for a substitute. The upside: it provides you a golden alternative to emerge this 12 months’s vacation hero.
Sauce Packets
Regular, civilized human beings can solely devour so many packets of Panda Categorical soy or Taco Bell fireplace sauce. Your dirtbag relative, in the meantime, is on the path brewing mustard soup out of his immediate mashed potatoes in a determined try to make them style like something in any respect. Allow him with the candy present of a crumpled handful of condiments from the again of your junk drawer.
Talenti Ice Cream Containers
Your outdoorsy relative could let you know that she plans to make use of your considerate present as an on-trail Tupperware. They could even accomplish that for some time. However what they received’t let you know—particularly if they’re a lady who spends lengthy months in a tent or van—is that meals storage is merely a stopping level on each Talenti’s trajectory to its final destiny: getting used as a pee jar.
Empty Plastic Minibottles
Like Tic Tac bins, Altoid tins, and small tablet bottles, empty shooters make helpful vessels for carrying powders and liquids on the path. Suppose: spices, olive oil, and scorching sauce. (Or dish cleaning soap, in case your giftee makes use of it, which is uncertain.) In contrast to Altoid tins or Tic Tac bins, mini bottles have the additional benefit of being simple to seek out alongside highways and outdoors truck stops in every single place. Trace: They’re a good higher present in the event that they’re not absolutely empty.
A Good Stick
There are sticks. After which there are good sticks. We’re speaking about specimens which can be comparatively straight, chin-height, about an inch and a half in diameter, inexperienced however not too inexperienced, and lined in easy bark. Do you’ve gotten the proper strolling stick within the yard-waste luggage at present sitting on our curb? Definitely not. However truthfully, your path trash beloved one will in all probability nonetheless take what you’ve bought. If it’s not tall sufficient to be used as a workers, it’ll at the least make good tinder.
Gently Creased Aluminum Foil
Foil is nice for making pot lids, wind screens, and meals packets for open-fire cooking. It’s additionally simple to strip out from underneath your vacation cookies and stick underneath the tree, burnt sprinkles and all. Previous pie pans and chafing dishes may also work in a pinch. They’re simply more durable to wrap.
Dryer Lint
Who doesn’t desire a ball of outdated clothes fibers, useless pores and skin cells, and hair for Christmas? You. Who does? Your backpacking-obsessed member of the family. Dryer lint makes each an important firestarter and an important stocking stuffer. Simply watch out about how shut you hold that stocking to your personal hearth.
A Pair of Matching Bread Baggage
Nothing says ‘I like you’ just like the present of dry ft. In case your relative spends a variety of time backpacking within the Southeast, Pacific Northwest, or anyplace else with godawful climate, get them a matched set of used bread luggage. Worn over socks, they’re assured to maintain your ft dry-ish and warm-ish. Professional tip: Don’t fear about dumping out the crumbs—that’s simply additional insulation
The Rubbish Bag Itself
It’s Christmas morning, and also you open your trash can looking for a present, just for disaster to strike: It’s empty! Thankfully for you, this worst-case state of affairs is definitely a best-case state of affairs. Trash luggage make glorious waterproof pack liners. So, rip that child out of the bin and stick it underneath the tree as is.
Oh, and in the event you occur to note that the cookies and milk are gone, don’t get too excited: The wrongdoer is the opposite bearded vagrant in your own home—not Santa.
