Last Minute Gift Ideas For The Middle-Aged Man In Your Life

Christ­mas is one week away, and I’ve been told that men my age are hard to shop for. So if you still need to get a gift for the dad/husband/whatever in your life, I offer this list of afford­able pur­chas­es that have brought me joy.

• If your guy does­n’t like the Bat­tery Dad­dy, is he even a mid­dle-aged man? Stores near­ly all your bat­ter­ies in one con­ve­nient place. We got ours at Cost­co and I’ve seen them for sale at Home Depot and Ace Hard­ware. About $20.
• Key­Catch mag­net­ic screws for hang­ing keys beneath light switch­es. These things are amaz­ing. They replace the exist­ing screw in your wall plate and I 10/10 rec­om­mend. At about $15 they’d be a great stock­ing stuffer.
• The Bible Is Fun­ny card game is a hoot for a Chris­t­ian audi­ence. Think Apples to Apples but with Bible vers­es. I got it recent­ly and have loved it, but I do think it will have lim­it­ed replay val­ue. There just aren’t enough cards for long-term enjoy­ment, but plen­ty enough for play­ing with the fam­i­ly for the rest of Christ­mas break. About $20.
• Gaffer tape is so much bet­ter than duct/duck tape for almost every­thing. It holds tight­ly but does­n’t leave a tacky residue when you pull it off. If your guy does­n’t know about this won­der­ful stuff, buy him a roll. About $20.
• When we’re trav­el­ing, the Lec­tro­Fan EVO White Noise Machine real­ly helps cre­ate a rest­ful envi­ron­ment. About $40.
• I love these Wig­far Bone Con­duc­tion Head­phones. For about $25 I can legal­ly lis­ten to pod­casts while I’m bik­ing: these don’t cov­er your ears at all but instead pump sound waves direct­ly into your face bones.
  • Side note: I had hoped to use them in the gym as well, but the back band loops out a lit­tle too far. There are oth­er com­pa­nies that make this tech­nol­o­gy, and per­haps one of them is bet­ter-fit­ting. Dig around. If your guy swims there are vari­ants that work under­wa­ter.
• The scottchen Spray Can Paint Mix­er fits into your drill and quick­ly mix­es up a spray can. About $20.
• The Niim­bot label mak­er prints labels quick­ly. It’s com­pact, there are lots of labels you can buy, and it does what I want. About $20.
• Final­ly, some­thing Paula and I have been doing for a while is buy­ing Christ­mas tree orna­ments for places we’ve lived or been on vaca­tion. That way dec­o­rat­ing the tree becomes a fun cel­e­bra­tion of our his­to­ry togeth­er. If none of the oth­er gifts feel like a good fit, maybe buy your guy an orna­ment from his alma mater or from your favorite fam­i­ly vaca­tion.

I hope at least one of these feels right for the mid­dle-aged man in your life. Mer­ry Christ­mas!