The gifting season is just around the corner, and if your family is highly proactive & utilitarian, you might already be getting emails asking for your wish list. Instead of replying-all as an adult human with a list of things you want people to get you (cringe!) on an email thread containing a laundry list of relatives (double cringe!), it’s far more chic and peace-protecting to have an external wish list on a website that makes it easy for people to shop for you.
Unfortunately, since the mid-2000s, one singular company has managed to corner the market on shareable wish lists while they were busy cornering the market on… literally everything else. So for those of us who try as hard as we can to avoid shopping with a company that is literally in the business of killing small businesses – we need a different way.
An Amazon wish list alternative that I’ve been enjoying for nearly two years, ThingsToGetMe (my referral link), is easy to use for both the wish list creators and the wish list shoppers. Moreover, it’s run by two real humans with kind, smart brains who want to offer a low-stress way for people to navigate gift-giving. If you miss supporting a business that really feels like it has a human soul, ThingsToGetMe is going to be a breath of fresh air. Oh, and it’s 100% free.
ThingsToGetMe has everything that you want in a wish list manager:
- A browser plugin that fetches images and info from the product page
- A drag & drop list management interface with categories and sections
- Easy, bite-sized share links that aren’t buried in menus
- Areas in each listing to put notes, size, preferred color, priority, etc.
- A Reserve feature that alerts gift buyers that someone else purchased an item so there’s no double-gifting (but it won’t alert you unless you want it to!)
- A way to save your friends’ ThingsToGetMe wish lists for easy reference
- An easy to use phone app
But those are just the basics, the functions that make this wish list a complete product. ThingsToGetMe doesn’t stop there, though.
You can also:
- Create & easily manage multiple lists
- Customize the look of your Wish List, including color, photo, background, etc.
- Create events (birthdays, weddings, mutual aid, etc.) with specific wish lists
- Create collaborative lists with friends
- List and receive money – cold, hard cash! Routed (safely & securely) directly to your bank account
- Keep track of loved ones’ birthdays in the Birthday Log
- Use a list to track charity contributions and needed items
- Use “Mail Forwarding” aka Private Shipping to receive gifts from people without revealing your address
- Use their Easy Secret Santa program to manage friend group or colleague gifting
While the site and app might be devoid of the splashy, hyper-marketed pizazz of other modern platforms, it more than makes up for it in ease of use and functionality. ThingsToGetMe is the brainchild of a cute couple named Rob & Raimonda. Combining the mind of Rob, a programmer, with the dream-chasing entrepreneurial drive of his wife, Raimonda, resulted in ThingsToGetMe becoming such a fantastic application.
Here’s me adding a cat named Audrey to my wish list (for example purposes only, though I think we might meet her this weekend?!). The browser extension has fetched the name of the website, the adoption fee (lol), and the photos I need for my illustrative wish list. It is legitimately fun to do.
This example also serves to show you are no longer limited to products on one single website. You can skip and frolic all over the internet, collecting favorite items from wherever you want. They’re all treated the same by the browser extension and phone app.
There’s no excess on ThingsToGetMe. You’re not being inundated with advertisements, there’s no affiliate-link riddled suggestion section… it’s just for making lists! Web-accessible wish lists are literally their purpose, and they take care to make sure that’s always the vibe.
I know it might seem like a small beans thing to write a whole review about, but it’s astonishing how much a little application like this can tidy up and simplify messes in your brain. For instance, if you’re like me and have a huge desire to stay current with the birthdays of loved ones, but are ADHD-brained and thus, for almost no reason, cannot – this is a set it and forget it solution.
Additionally, when someone asks me what I want to be gifted for the holiday season, I freeze. Not only do I have feel deep discomfort announcing things that I want people to get me for gifts, but I never remember what I want! I could fall in love with 100 things and when someone asks me to tell them about one, I go blank. ThingsToGetMe is a perfect way for me to not only offer people an easy way to shop for me, but also remember what I like – for myself! One of my categories on my wish list is “Expensive Stuff I Want to Buy When I’m Independently Wealthy.” It might be a while, and I don’t want to forget that I wanted to buy this $300 analog minimalist desktop calendar!
So migrate your stupid Amazon wish list and give your desired items the respect they deserve on ThingsToGetMe. It’ll clear your mind in more ways than one!
