Give your Christmas list a theme

Your brother wants to get you something decent this year. He opens your wishlist and finds a phone case, a Yotam Ottolenghi cookbook, a pair of hiking boots and a candle. He closes it again and buys you a voucher. Give the list a theme and he knows in two seconds whether he is shopping for your kitchen, your camera bag or your sofa.

A theme does the thinking for the giver

A list with a theme tells people what you are into right now. Someone with £20 to spend and someone with £150 can both find something that fits, and neither has to guess whether you would rather have a gadget or a jumper. It also stops duplicates. Once the family has seen "the kitchen list", nobody buys you headphones.

Build it around a hobby

Say you have taken up photography this year. The list could hold a 50mm lens, a Peak Design strap, a year of Lightroom, a book of Saul Leiter's work and a half-day walk with a local photographer. Someone who runs might list a Garmin, a pair of Merino base layers, a foam roller and a place in the spring 10k. A reader can narrow it to a genre, then add a clip-on reading light, a pair of bookends and a wool blanket for the armchair.

Put the small and the consumable on there too. The film, the chalk for the climbing bag, the good coffee beans. Those are the gifts a cousin with a £15 budget can actually buy, and they get used up, so nobody feels they gave you clutter.

Build it around where you are in life

Someone who moved into their first house in September can theme the whole list around the house: a decent chef's knife, a set of proper curtains, a spade and some bulbs for the garden. A graduate starting their first job might ask for the things nobody buys themselves at 23: a good winter coat, a desk lamp, a leather bag that survives a commute.

Parents with young kids tend to go for things the whole family can use, like a big box of Catan or four sets of waterproofs. And a couple whose last child has left home can, without any embarrassment, ask for a restaurant voucher, theatre tickets and a two-person cookery class. They have the pans already.

Ask for the experience instead of the object

If your cupboards are full, the list can be entirely things to do. A weekend of walking in the Lake District, a climbing course, a ticket to a gig in March. A "make something" theme might be a pottery evening, a bread-making day or a box of decent watercolours and a course to go with them. A local theme works especially well for people who have just moved to a new city: a museum membership, a voucher for the restaurant on the corner, tickets to the small theatre nobody has heard of yet.

Practical wishes still count

A winter theme is a soft throw, a proper tea from a proper shop, a good pair of slippers and a dressing gown you would not have bought yourself. An "organised life" theme is a Leuchtturm diary, a set of decent storage boxes and a label maker. A self-care theme can hold bath salts, a year of a meditation app and, honestly, a good pillow.

The trick with practical gifts is to ask for the better version. You would buy the £8 slippers for yourself. On a wishlist, ask for the £40 ones.

Setting the list up

Spread the prices so the theme works from £15 up to £150. Write two lines at the top explaining the theme; it gives people a starting point and often they come back with something you had not thought of. If you have two real interests, split the list into two sections rather than squeezing a tent and a stand mixer under one heading.

When you are ready, create a Christmas wish list around whichever theme fits this year, add the note at the top, and send it to your brother in November while he still has time.