Yes , while my mother was alive I was always be sent home with random things. Worse when the kids came with me.
My in laws just down sized and the amount of crap that was sent to our house was almost out of control. I think we basically were their dumpster.

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"I think I've cracked the code. double letters are cheaters except for perfect squares (a, d, i, p and y). So Leddy isn't a cheater... "

Mom saved all of the elementary school participation ribbons, selected homework assignments, and my baby teeth. She decided it would be neat to give them to me for my 40th bday.

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Take a short break from ST and read my blog:
http://tri-banter.blogspot.com/

My dad has a small hobby farm --- huge garden with a lot of variety, pheasants, chickens, meat rabbits, has had ducks, started doing some beekeeping this year and has been producing honey, hunts & fishes a lot so he always has game. I'm not allowed to leave his house without helping reduce his stockpile of produce, meat, and/or eggs from some fowl species. Although he keeps trying to get me to take a baby rabbit or two for my children to keep as pets; as much as I'd like to, I'm afraid I'd get tired of having a pet that my children wouldn't take care of and then I'd go crazy and butcher it in the back yard some afternoon. I'm only half joking.

I don't often lift things from him, but have secretly taken a couple of things from him in the past -- a pile of photos that had been sitting in a box for years since at the time I literally had zero photos of my deceased mother & the photos pre-dated him marrying her and adopting us, and I also took a CD with my grandpa singing and preaching (retired Nazarene pastor) & a DVD with a photo compilation of my grandma, both of which would have inevitably ended up in a box of random things and then the trash if they were still at his place. I couldn't let that happen; I idolized them, still do.

Every time I leave my father in law's house, without fail, I have to grab a drink from the garage fridge. He only lives 12 miles away, so there's no "need" but it's almost reflexive. But I guess I'm the same whenever I leave home -- feel like I must have something to drink when I'm in the car.

My MIL used to do that. We eventually started saying "we don't need/want this". She's not as bad any more.

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How does Danny Hart sit down with balls that big?

This will be my wife. We constantly have a pile of children's items on a dining table -- the random pieces of paper they've made crayon marks on at school, homework assignments, random small toys with some unknown sentimental value, crappy crafts, trinket & trash toys. I go through the pile, holding up each item, "keep this one?," "trashing this one OK?," "looks like this is pure crap; I'm dumping it, alright?", reducing it by 3/4. That remaining 1/4 just keeps getting dropped in a box that she'll eventually do something with, god alone knows what, but that box will eventually become 10. On the flip side, though, I have basically nothing from my childhood, save for a small pile of photos I swiped from my dad's house, a stuffed animal, and a book I wrote in first grade (which is awesome, by the way....everyone dies from genocide and then disease); it would be nice to have a little more than that, like maybe a box.

My parents have a house in the mountains and when we all go together they'll send us home with left over food, but we only take the things we'll actually eat.

I've lived in the US for 22 years and in that time, we have received a trickle of stuff from my childhood, all via transatlantic passenger flights. I have no idea how my parents did it without incurring thousands in excess baggage charges.

This has ranged from small stuff like commemorative coins, pens and toys from Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee in 1977, to a HEAVY wooden wagon with wooden puzzles inside that I made in HS wood shop, to a wheeled hobby horse from the early 70's (that I don't even remember) that my mother thought my kids would enjoy. Looks like this:



Also random books, medals, photos etc. I think one of my old lifeguard whistles even made the trip one year.

My dad also apparently believes that it's very difficult to buy underwear in the US, because every time they visit he brings me multipacks of undershirts, underpants and socks that he picks up cheap when my mother drags him out shopping with her, and stashes away for their next trip over here. I don't have the heart to tell him to stop, despite the fact the stuff is usually shitty quality and/or fits weird.

I have to be very careful when talking with my mother not to casually mention being even vaguely interested in something from the UK, because she then makes it her life mission to obtain it and then makes it a regular item to bring on subsequent visits. Good when it's whiskey from their local distillery, not so good when it's clothing because that never ends well (wrong size/style, knockoff version or something).

Until I explained the wonders of the interwebs to my parents, we also used to get a selection of editions of my hometown newspaper that might have something/someone of interest in them.

I don't know about random items. I do know that from some members of the family i get 10 pound book vouchers and socks as gifts

I am 43...........

At what point does 10 pounds seem inappropriate to give an adult. I appreciate the gesture, i just think its weird

My dad doesn't have much but oftens gifts me with a piece of driftwood he finished, some rock he polished, home made jerky or dried fruit. He gifts me with phone calls to tell me something interesting is on TV or to let me know it is going to freeze so I need to cover my oranges or pipes. While not adding up to much in a monetary sense, it lets me know he is thinking of me frequently, which is priceless.

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I'll be what I am
A solitary man

My in laws try to randomly pawn things off on us... best one I remember was a deli meat slicer

This closely resembled my grandfather. He had a nice size garden and liked to show off his yield. You were expected to take squash or tomato home. But those were all useful. Grandma kept the downstairs fridge stocked with soda. Again, you were expected to take them. All those were practical items.

I just opened a drawer in our kitchen and we have ghost shaped chocolate molds to make suckers. My wife will NEVER use them. Not sure why they came back on one of these trips.

When my mom passed away my dad cleaned out the kitchen pantry of all the herbs, etc and gave them to me. Some of the stuff was ten years old or so. Mom had Alzheimer's so dad did the cooking and never used herbs, etc. for the last several years of her life. Stuff was too old to use but I thanked him just the same.

a big commercial sized one like in the grocery store?

That reminds me of my mother in law. She doesn't send things home with us, but she just has to buy a physical gift for every damn holiday, anniversary, and birthday. Literally, every holiday where a gift could be purchased. The problem is that we have everything we want/need, save for the things you wouldn't want someone purchasing for you because you want a specific item and they wouldn't know what to get anyway, so she ends up getting random home decor types of items or kitchen gadgets. Seriously, I don't need a damn avocado slicer even though I eat a million of the things; that's what I have a knife block and decent knives for. It's taken some training, but she's better about it now; my wife & I don't need more physical items, so she's giving me things like restaurant gift cards & random food products that I'll enjoy, like fancy pistachios. I can handle that, but I'm going to explode if I see one more friggin vase around here because -- god bless her for the tenderness toward her family -- my wife cannot bring herself to get rid of any of it.

Smaller than that but not by much ... He thought we might want it since we entertain more than they do and we could just pick up whole hams and joints of beef. We declined even after his sales pitch included a demonstration

nothing weird like your list, but we send home cookies, or homemade pies when the kids visit at the holidays. they are adults and can also raid my wine storage.

We at also trying to get them to finally take their junk that the have left at home. Though mostly my son has gotten rid of his, but my daughter still has some boxes of things.

For us, the worst part of getting a vacation home (BDB alert) is it's become a dumping ground for whenever our parents or other family visit there... My Dad's overwhelming weakness is books, and being retired he has the time to churn through a lot, so our 'Library' keeps growing whenever he stays there and leaves them behind for us. Some of them would be OK if I ever had the time, but w/ a full-time job and 2 kids at home still that just ain't in the cards, but the worst are the old travel guides he gets used at Goodwill or wherever (or worse yet, he'll get a newer edition and gift us his old one). Seriously, who the fuck wants a 10-15-year-old travel guide to <fill-in-the-blank>?!? If I were interested in going there, nowadays I'd check out this thing called the interweb(?) where people can supposedly post photos, information, and reviews, like, right now; or if I wanted a small pocket guide for a backup that wasn't dependent on battery life and WiFi, I'd at least buy one printed in the last year or 2 so the prices are in Euros instead of Francs & Lira, FFS.

But then at least books are relatively easy to store, and unload in turn. My MiL is even worse, trying to pass down household shit like old dishware or glasses, serving platters, furniture, etc. It'd be one thing if they were in good shape or matched sets, but invariably one of the pieces is missing and/or badly chipped, and then of course they're fragile and don't stack or box up well. Most of the time my wife is on board w/ me like "WTF are we supposed to do w/ this?!?" but once in awhile she succumbs, and so now we have shit like 1 entire cupboard shelf dedicated 364 days/year to storing a mis-matched set of hand-painted turkey platters so we can dust them off for Thanksgiving each year. I get that she grew up much poorer while the Depression was still fresh in her parents' memory, so she sees more value in getting the most mileage possible out of stuff before replacing it (which I commend in general), but seriously, a 3-legged bed frame sure as shit isn't worth my time or trouble to move and/or repair; if I actually needed another bed frame for one of the kids (which I don't), I'd fucking order one and have it delivered to my front door for less than I spend on an average bar tab. Gah.

I think we've made enough involuntary poo faces while attempting to be semi-polite when they've tried offering this junk to us in person before, so now they've figured out it's much easier to just 'give' it to us when we're not around ~ hence the vacation home has become the proxy field of battle, littered w/ dead soliders. It's almost like a game now to see what else they've left us the next time we visit after them, except we're still stuck w/ the joke after the laughs wear off.

My dad once gave me a gas lawn mower that spewed black crude oil out of its cracked block all over my lawn.I called him immediately and we really got into it . That left a scar.

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sometimes

Did you report the spill? This BP written all over it!

Lots of things over time. Oddest item = small kitchen cupboard from a remodel that happened in the 80's. They moved out of that house 15 years ago. Why they had it I don't know, why I now have it, I really don't know.