I do this with Amazon wishlists. The side benefit is that often things from that list end up as Christmas or birthday presents so I get to both stop buying so much myself, but receive some of them anyway.
Me too. I add stuff to my wishlist throughout the year, then one month before Christmas and my birthday I go through and remove all the items I no longer want. Plenty stays on, of course, but plenty is also like "Ehhhh...I wouldn't actually do much with that", "Ehhh, I ended up seeing that elsewhere and don't care to own it", etc.
I do this for all my old technology books. Like most of you I was sure there was a nugget of knowledge I could still extract from some old book so I kept them for a long time. In one day I bar-code scanned in all of the UPCs and saved them in a wish list. If the book was available cheap then it went in the paper recycling bin. I told myself that if I really want that OLD book back it is available for $1+s&h used. I cleaned up a lot of shelf space and still have my books available on a few days notice.
PS-I have never needed to buy anything back from my old book wish list.
I've been trying to convince my wife's family that I don't want birthday or Christmas presents for years. No such luck... I end up having to put a bunch of useless crap on my amazon wishlist just to keep them happy.
The trick is to request non-physical stuff. As an example, request a track day on a race car track (if you're into cars). That way, you get an interesting experience and no/reduced clutter.
I always ask for Kiva or Watsi gift cards/donations in my name, and make it very clear that any other gifts will get sold or returned to fund those two things.