Use a gift registry website for your family and maybe do a secret santa to cut down on the volume of shopping

First off, there's nothing frugal about duplicate gifts. A return still costs time and money, and with good communication a duplicate gift should simply never happen.

Something like eight years ago I built a website for my family to use - FamilyGiftRegistry.net - to act as a private gift registry for the family (available for private use by other families for free, of course). It's been a life saver ever since. Back then there wasn't much but today there are a few other sites out there that do the same thing with their own set of features like Giftster and GiftPickle. Basically there's a lot to choose from out there now, so it's worth finding a site your family can be happy with for using year after year. Once up and running there's less confusion over what to get for everyone. Folks in my family at least have gotten the hang of filling out wish lists with a variety of items that still allow the giver to be creative and work within a budget.

My wife brought the idea of secret santa some years ago - basically a list of players in the family is generated wherein each person gives on gift and gets one gift. For families that are grown up, like mine, this is really helpful because we all know we love each other and spending time together is the most important thing. Cutting down on the volume of money spent, gifts given, and time spent spending money has roundly helped out the entire family. Most gift registry sites these days have tools to set up a secret santa game within minutes and automatically inform the players via email.