Finding gifts for grandparents who have everything is hard for a simple reason: they are telling the truth. By seventy or eighty, most people have the kitchen they want, the coat they like and a drawer of scented candles from previous years. Another object is something they will have to thank you for, find a place for, and eventually ask someone to take away.

What they rarely have enough of is the stuff that cannot be bought in a shop: regular time with you, a reason to go somewhere, someone asking about their life, and help with the small jobs that have quietly become difficult.

The fifteen ideas below are grouped by the kind of gift they are. Most cost little. Only one of them is something we sell, and it is clearly marked.

Gifts of time together

1. A standing monthly lunch. Not “we should get lunch sometime”, which never happens, but a fixed day: the first Thursday of every month, same café, your treat. It works for someone who has everything because it is the one thing that cannot pile up in a cupboard, and because it gives them something to look forward to that is already in the diary.

Tip: write the twelve dates on a card and give them the card. A date on paper gets kept. A promise in conversation gets forgotten by February.

2. Ask them to teach you something. Bread, darning, how to sharpen a knife, the card game nobody under fifty knows the rules of. Being asked for their skill is a different experience from being given something, and for many grandparents it is the rarer of the two.

Tip: make it a series of three sessions rather than one. One afternoon is a nice gesture. Three means you actually learn it, and they can see that you did.

Experiences they would not book for themselves

3. A return visit to a place from their past. The town they grew up in, the seaside resort of their honeymoon, the street where they first rented a flat. People who have everything often have the means to go, but not the push, and not someone to drive.

Tip: take a few old photographs of the place with you and try to find the exact spot each was taken. It gives the day a shape, and it starts more conversations than any guidebook.

4. Tickets for two, with you as the second ticket. A concert, a match, a play, a garden they have always meant to see. The ticket is the excuse. The company is the gift.

Tip: check access before you book, not on the day. Seats near an aisle, a step-free entrance and somewhere to sit at the interval decide whether the day is a pleasure or an ordeal.

5. A class you take together. Pottery, watercolour, a cookery evening, a guided walk. It puts you both in the position of beginner, which is a surprisingly levelling place to spend an afternoon.

Tip: choose something with sitting-down options and short sessions, and let them pick from three you have shortlisted, so it feels like their choice rather than your project.

Gifts that record their story

These are the gifts that tend to get more valuable every year rather than less. None of them need to be expensive, and none need to be finished in a weekend.

6. A recorded interview. An hour of their voice, answering questions about their childhood, their parents and the work they did. It costs nothing but the hour, and a phone is enough equipment. Our guide to recording a family interview on your phone covers the settings and placement that make the difference.

Tip: bring a written list of questions so the conversation does not stall. Our list of questions to ask your grandparents is a good place to start, and three or four good ones are enough for a first sitting.

7. A framed recipe in their handwriting. Ask them to write out the dish the family associates with them, on good paper, then have it framed for their own kitchen, with copies for the rest of the family. The handwriting is what makes it.

Tip: write down the story behind it as well: who taught them, when it was first made, what it was served for. There is more on that in how to record a family recipe and its story.

8. A guided journal for them to fill in. For grandparents who would rather write than be interviewed, a journal of prompts lets them answer in their own time and their own hand. There are many of these. Ours, the Family Legacy Journal, is a printed hardcover or paperback of 58 questions in 8 chapters, sized for writing by hand, and it is also published in German, French and Italian.

Tip: whichever journal you choose, fill in the first page with them, sitting down together. A blank book is daunting. A book with one answer already in it is a book that has been started.

Photographs they can hold

9. A photo-scanning afternoon. Bring a scanner or a phone app, a pot of tea and an empty afternoon, and go through the shoebox together. You do the scanning. They do the talking. The talking is the valuable part.

Tip: write names and rough dates on the back of each print in soft pencil as you go, before it goes back in the box. Without that, a scanned photograph of unknown people is only slightly more useful than the original. Our guide on how to label and preserve old family photos explains what to write and what to store them in.

10. A printed photo book. Once the scanning is done, a small printed book of the best forty or fifty pictures, in rough order, with a line of caption under each. It gives them something to show visitors and gives you a reason to finish the scanning.

Tip: keep it to one theme, such as their childhood, their marriage or one house, rather than a whole life. A focused book gets made. A complete one gets planned for years.

Practical upgrades

11. Replace the thing they use every day. The wobbly reading lamp, the blunt kitchen knife, the kettle that is too heavy to lift when full. People who have everything often have everything in a slightly worn-out version, and they would never think to replace it themselves.

Tip: do not ask what they want. Watch for a week. The thing they complain about under their breath, or the one they work around, is the gift.

12. A job done, not a gadget bought. Clearing the gutters, sorting the loft, setting up the new phone so the grandchildren’s photos arrive on it, putting the hedge back in order. A voucher for a specific job, with a date attached, is worth more than most things in a box.

Tip: be specific on the card. “Three hours of help” goes unused out of politeness. “I will clear the shed on Saturday 14 March” gets done.

Consumables they will enjoy and use up

13. A standing order of something they love. A monthly delivery from a local bakery, a coffee they like but would not buy for themselves, fresh flowers once a fortnight. It suits someone with full cupboards precisely because it gets used up and leaves no clutter behind.

Tip: start small, three months rather than twelve, and ask after the first delivery whether it was right. A standing order of the wrong thing becomes an obligation.

14. A taste of where they came from. A hamper of food from the region or country they grew up in, or the sweets they remember from childhood that are hard to find now. Smell and taste open memories in a way photographs do not, and it often starts a story nobody had heard.

Tip: sit down and eat some of it with them when you give it. That is when the stories come out.

Christmas gifts for grandparents: give the grandchildren’s time

Christmas is where this list works best, because it is often the one time of year when the whole family is in the same room and can pool its effort.

15. A book of vouchers from the grandchildren. Each grandchild writes out two or three vouchers for something they will actually do: a weekly phone call through January, a walk, a game of chess, an afternoon helping in the garden, a video call from university. For grandparents with everything, the grandchildren’s attention is the thing in shortest supply, and seeing it promised in a child’s handwriting is often the present they talk about afterwards.

Tip: let the children choose the vouchers themselves, with an adult only checking that each one is realistic. A promise a twelve-year-old picked will be kept. A promise a parent wrote for them will not.

The same thinking works across the whole list. At Christmas, one larger shared gift from the whole family, such as the return trip or the photo book, usually lands better than six small separate ones, and it spreads the effort so no single person is left doing all the scanning in December.

How to choose gifts for grandparents who have everything

If you are stuck, ask two questions. First: what do they complain about, or work around, at the moment? That points to the practical upgrades. Second: what do they talk about when they are relaxed? That points to the experiences and the story gifts.

Then pick the gift that involves you. Nearly every idea above is stronger when you are part of it, and that is not an accident. The grandparent who has everything usually has everything except enough of the people they bought it all for.

Choose one idea from this list, put a date on it, and write that date on the card. The rest will follow from the first afternoon you spend together.