What should I give for a new baby, a new home, or when I send flowers?

Four pages, and they agree on the shape of a good present: the thing the household will not buy for itself, in the size or type it can actually use, with one question asked first. The pages are also honest that each of these gifts can land wrong, and they say how to stop that.

For the baby, buy the six-month size. Buy the six-month size is new parents describing what they were given and what they used, and its finding runs all through those conversations: newborn and three-month clothes are outgrown almost immediately, some babies are born too big for them, and because the newborn outfit is the one every guest reaches for, the family ends up with a drawer of it, tags still on, and nothing for the months after. Buying up, six months, nine, twelve, puts your gift in the gap. The catch several conversations learned by giving a swimsuit that arrived in December is the season: the sum is birth month plus the size, and the clothes should match the weather that sum lands in. For the giver who would rather not guess, that page’s ranking is clear. Nappies and wipes, in the sizes after newborn and in whatever brand the family uses, are the gift parents are glad of; the registry is the parents telling you what they need, and the dull items on it are the ones used daily; three separate conversations insist on something for the mother that has nothing to do with the baby. Above all of it, in the accounts that received it: food and time, a freezer meal that can be eaten one-handed, a specific offer of laundry or a grocery run or a held baby, rather than the general offer nobody accepts. The exception the page carries honestly: if the baby was early or small, or the registry asks for newborn sizes, the size-up rule is the wrong rule for this family. And one contraindication for visitors: do not sit and be hosted, and do not take the baby during the nap that is the parent’s only sleep.

For the new home, the fire extinguisher, with something softer beside it. Give the fire extinguisher comes from twenty-one conversations and 399 accounts asked what to bring to a housewarming. Ten separate conversations say it is the ideal overlooked present, practical and life-saving, and three accounts in the prevalence notes never owned one until somebody handed it to them. The type matters: a full-size multipurpose unit, labelled ABC or BC, which the US Fire Administration names as the type for a home, and not the small aerosol can, which two conversations say runs out in fifteen or twenty seconds. Three separate conversations prefer a fire blanket beside it or instead, because a blanket does not expire. The argument that page renders, three accounts to three, is whether the box reads as care or as a dig: two accounts in one caution say a recipient may take it as a comment on their competence, and one account, a firefighter, calls it a bad gift outright. The accounts’ way through is a second present and one sentence, I want you to feel safe here, the way you would say it of insurance, and a note saying where you would keep it. Two accounts’ cautions decide who not to give it to: a distant relative who may misread it, and a friend whose last home burned. The page’s other list, for the same occasion: four separate conversations say a basic toolkit, and four say consumables are the safe present, food, cleaning things, toiletries, a power strip, because they impose no taste and are used up at once.

Before you send flowers, ask if there is a cat. Ask if there is a cat before you send lilies says people do not set out to send a poisoned gift; they order flowers in a hurry, thinking about the person rather than the household, and lilies are the default in exactly the arrangement where the recipient is least able to cope, the sympathy bouquet. Two families of flower cause kidney failure in cats, true lilies and daylilies, and the word lily on a label does not tell you which you have. A veterinary school’s guidance and the ASPCA treat both as poisonous to the kidneys, and less than a single leaf has been enough. It is not usually a chewed flower: pollen comes off onto whatever passes, the counter, the floor, a sleeve and the cat’s own coat, and the cat washes, and the vase water carries it too. So the instruction is not to put the lilies somewhere high; the plant has to be out of the house. The steps that page gives: ask whether there is a cat; if there is, tell the florist no lilies of any kind and no daylilies, in those words, and ask them to confirm they will not substitute one in later; and choose from the safe side, roses, gerbera daisies, sunflowers, orchids, freesia and snapdragons. For a sympathy arrangement, ask for the person’s own favourite flower rather than the default. If a cat has already been near one, that page’s safety line is the only urgent thing on it: call a vet or the nearest emergency animal hospital now, say the word lily, and take the flower with you, because treatment begun in the first few hours has an excellent record and after about eighteen it generally does not.

For the cat owner, the box was the present. The box it came in was the present is a dozen years of cat owners comparing failed purchases and triumphant rubbish: the tall tower, the plush cave and the motorised toy, and the cat claiming the packaging. Most of what a cat wants is cheap or free, a box, a paper bag, a cardboard roll, a high perch, a patch of sun, and when a box goes soft the next one is free and new again, which no permanent furniture can offer. If you are giving to a household with a cat, that page’s one non-negotiable is worth carrying: string, ribbon and yarn are supervised-only toys, because swallowed string can require surgery. And its relief is aimed at the owner: if money is tight, skipping the pet aisle is not shortchanging the animal, which has been voting for the cheap option all along.

Who this is not for. The baby page names them: if you do not know whether the family uses cloth nappies or which brand suits the baby’s skin, ask before you buy a case of the wrong thing. The extinguisher page says the present does not make anyone a firefighter, and the two fire services it checked disagree about whether a householder should fight a small fire at all. And the lily page says that if you have a dog and no cat, most of it is not aimed at you, because the kidney poisoning is a cat problem, with one correction worth keeping: hydrogen peroxide to make a dog sick is a real veterinary measure, at a real dose, on a vet’s instruction, and it burns the stomach lining, so it is not something to reach for unasked.