It’s Christmas time! It’s such a special time of the year and celebrating the season with friends and family is something I look forward to all year.
I hope you and yours create awesome memories this holiday season. It’s been a rough couple of years and we all deserve a little peace and happiness.
Our favorite Christmas Gifts For Mobile Home Owners
We’ve put together a few of our favorite gifts for mobile homeowners. These gifts are great for anyone that loves vintage mobile homes and campers.
Books for Vintage Camper and Mobile Home Fans
If you like vintage trailers and mobile homes then this is the book for you! It’s a feast for the eyes with awesome photos of old homes and vintage publications. Even better, I’ve never seen it over $10 with free shipping if you have Prime.
Trailer Travel, A Visual History of Mobile America
Hands down, this is the best book I’ve seen about vintage mobile homes and trailers. The graphics are gorgeous and there are tons of vintage trailer ads, magazine covers, and photos of trailer shows and sales centers. The best thing, I’ve never seen it cost over $10 and it has free shipping for Prime members.
Trailerama
While this isn’t my favorite vintage mobile home book, it’s certainly a top 5. It also has great graphics and a lot of great information about vintage mobile homes. This book has hundreds of pages and is well worth the $24 it costs on Amazon.
The Illustrated Field Guide to Vintage Trailers
The Illustrated Field Guide to Vintage Trailers is perfect for your favorite vintage camper fan. There’s a page for every brand with cool graphics and information about the company and models. It’s def a treat for vintage camper fans but lacks models meant for full-time living produced after 1954.
You can buy it on Amazon for around $19 with free shipping for Prime members OR you can go straight to the book’s website (which is pretty cool) and buy a signed copy for around $25 (but I don’t know how much shipping is). The writers even have a vintage trailer ID app that you can subscribe to for a year for $24.99. Their blog is great, too.
Gifts for Mobile Home Owners in the Middle of a Remodel
These are helpful and thoughtful gifts for friends or family in the middle of a mobile home remodel or repair (or planning one). You could put together a gift basket using a toolbox as the ‘basket’ that includes tools and one of the books mentioned above.
Here’s the thing about tools, though. You truly get what you pay for. If a tool will only be used occasionally and won’t require torque or tension (I’m not sure those are the right words but tools like wrenches and handheld screwdrivers) then a cheap tool from Harbor Freight is fine.
However, you really should buy a higher quality product if a tool will be used often. You’ll usually end up saving money in the end. Cheap tools are made from cheap metals that can’t withstand a lot of strain (torque?). Unfortunately, quality tools are expensive.
Classic Red Toolbox
This classic red metal toolbox is, well, a classic. You can find it here at Home Depot for around $39.00
Urrea Heavy Duty Metal Tool Box – 16 in. X 7 in. X 7 in.
144 Piece Hand Tool Set
This 144 piece tool set from Home Depot has just about everything a mobile homeowner needs for quick fixes. It has a 4.8-Volt Cordless Screwdriver too.
Power Tools
Power tools are cool! There’s just something about them. I was raised by a single father that had me ‘working’ on cars when I was 5 (I never did hold that flashlight correctly..lol).
I remember he bought a power drill set when they first came out. The batteries would only stay charged for a short while and he’d jump onto me because I would press the button every few seconds. I can still hear him yell “You’re going to kill the battery!” Luckily, power tools have come a long way in 30 years and Lithium-ion batteries have improved drastically just in the last few years.
There are a few companies that make impressive power tools. We use to buy Porter-Cable or DeWalt sets for our plumbing company but then a business we did some work for gave us a Milwaukee set for Christmas and I was impressed. Makita and Ryobi aren’t too shabby either (though I’ve only used them a couple of times).
Here are a couple of power toolsets that would make great gifts (be warned, these aren’t cheap but you can usually find them on sale around the holidays and you can start with the cheapest set and add items later).
Dewalt Atomic 20 Volt Set
Milwaukee M18/M12 12/18-Volt Lithium-Ion Cordless 3/8 in. Ratchet and 1/2 in. Impact Wrench with Friction Ring Combo Kit
This Milwaukee Lithium-ion set doesn’t have as many items as the Dewalt set above but you can buy more pieces that will work with the battery packs. You can find it here at Home Depot for $199 as of 12/4/21.
RELATED: A list of all tools a mobile homeowner needs.
Christmas Decor Ideas
Christmas tree ornaments and mobile home-related decorations are great gifts for your favorite mobile homeowner.
Trailer Party Lights
These trailer party lights from Amazon would look great on a Christmas tree. Unfortunately, they cost around $17 and that seems a little high but I guarantee they’d be a hit with vintage camper fans.
Vintage Camper Ornaments
If an ornament is vintage camper themed it seems the price is tripled. Still, for less than $20 I think they’d make worthy keepsake gifts.
I love these vintage trailer ornaments on Amazon for around $14 :
And this Old World Glass Blown Christmas Camper Ornaments on Amazon for $19.99:
I bought this Airstream ornament last year on Amazon for less than $6.50 because it looks exactly like my 1965 Airstream Safari (I actually bought a couple of them) but this years it’s $16.94. Ugh.
Vintage Trailer Supply has a new website and it is awesome! They have tons of great vintage trailer-themed items, from books to yard decor. Here are a few ornaments that any mobile homeowner would appreciate:
Vintage Trailer Supply even has fabric by the yard with images created by Paige Bridges, a well-known artist of campers and vintage trailers. You could make pillows or curtains or even clothes.
Holiday Gift Guide from 2020
I put together an entire ‘book’ of gift ideas for mobile homeowners last year. In all honesty, these gift guides and articles are all created by websites in an effort to make commision on affiliate sales. It’s supposed to be easy money but I must be doing it wrong because I’ve earned less than $200 in affiliate commissions during the entire 10 years Mobile Home Living has been going. Still, it’s fun to ‘shop’ around for cool stuff and share my favorite products.
PS: My daughter ended up attending Converse College, a private all-girls college (though it’s going co-ed next year).
Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year!
It’s really not hard to find great gifts for mobile homeowners nowadays. Giving really is a lot more enjoyable than receiving, especially when you give gifts that match interests.
As always thanks for reading Mobile Home Living! We appreciate each and every one of you!
(Please note: many of these links are affiliate links which mean we receive a small percentage of the sales at no cost to you. It helps us to continue creating more mobile home-related articles. We are not affiliated with any companies and have not been paid to mention any of these products.)