Advice you’ll never hear from Miss Manners: You may send your friends and relatives birthday cards, anniversary cards, graduation cards, get-well cards and sympathy cards, but don’t send anyone a thank-you card. It’s too risky for both the sender and the recipient.
My advice comes from experience. I enjoy making greeting cards. That, along with petting my cat, is my therapy. But at one birthday per close friend a year, I will never be able to test out each of my 500 rubber stamps and 1,000 pieces of colored paper before I die. From time to time I have ventured into the risky world of thank-you cards. “Thank you for the marvelous dinner, good company, lovely weekend, etc. etc.. The response, at times overwhelming, isn’t what I anticipated: “In the future a simple thank you is enough.” “Please don’t do that. You make me feel bad.”
I know thank-you cards belong to another age, say, to Victorian England and to the upper classes there, and I’m not looking to return to the past. I could always create my cards and not send them, but cluttering the house with piles of unused cards defeats the aspirational goal of decluttering my house.
One solution is to stop sending thank-you cards and create ones to celebrate a completely different set of occasions: National Sourdough Bread Day, National Ferret Day, Tweed Day, American Circus Day (although this falls on April 3, in these times we could celebrate this one every day), World Rat Day, International Carrot Day or even Bell Bottoms Day. And the good news is that I suspect I have rubber stamps to cover all of these and more.
Still Life 
Wow! I have never had anyone tell me not to send a homemade card. That just feels so sad…I am sorry you had that experience. (Maybe I can also see your friends’ perspectives too.)
Making cards is some of the best therapy I have too. I don’t need 500 rubber stamps, but I might have double that number of kinds of paper around my apartment…! With you in spirit, sister.
We so seldom get mail — real mail — here from anyone that when a card arrives it gets center display on our fireplace mantel for months! Not everyone would respond as you’ve had happen. Did you need my address?
World Rat Day (or at the very least, American Rat Day) could also be celebrated daily in today’s times! (if you get the drift of my meaning!!!!!) J
Vicky
Don’t be afraid. . . Be focused. . . Be determined. . . Be hopeful. . . Be empowered. . . Empower yourselves with a good education. . . Lead by example with hope, never fear. –First Lady Michelle Obama, January 6, 2017
“When they go low, you go high.”– First Lady Michelle Obama
I would be thrilled to receive your thank you cards. How about you send me one for each of whom I give and/or do but who never send a thank you. That should keep you busy for the next year!