Reusing your Christmas wrapping

by Amy Judd | December 24, 2008 at 11:44 am

622 views | 17 Recommendations | 9 comments

So in just a few hours you will be unwrapping your Christmas gifts, or wrapping them, and we wanted to take this time to remind you that it's still important to have a Green Holiday and care for the environment, so here are a few tips of how to deal with your wrapping paper, before throwing it (or at the very least recycling it) away.

Re-wrapping

Many people celebrate Christmas morning at home before heading out to parties held by friends and family. You may even already have been to a few work gatherings and a Christmas Eve event. This should give you plenty of materials to help you wrap the gifts that are going out later in the day or that week. You can also reuse the materials to cover hostess gifts for your New Years Eve party!

Fold the wrapping paper into envelopes that can hold gift cards or money. Keep an eye out for generic colors, as these can be used for other holidays.

Shred up the paper and use it to line gift baskets.

You can also place it into storage for next year, or use the paper to protect items that you need to ship, rather than using newspaper.
You can also make your own decorations out of paper or use it to create a custom thank-you card or gift card.

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jessica.lam

at 13:06 on December 24th, 2008

This is quite important - I think the BC gov is trying to make people more aware about the paper waste from wrapping gifts - Ads on public transit promote the use of newspaper or magazines as wrapping paper.

I definitely hope people can find ways to minimize the waste....

Terri Potratz

at 15:48 on December 24th, 2008

I am a big fan of using newspaper to wrap gifts with...still looks nice if you decorate with ribbon or whatnot. Filling a garbage bag of wrapping paper each year is inexcusable. I keep a bag year-round to re-use tissue paper, ribbons and gift wrapping, so it's always handy and available.

Uwe Paschen

at 16:21 on December 24th, 2008

That is a great Idea Amy. I am still doing it today and so are the Kids since My grand mother did teach us not to waste any thing and she was very persuasive about it as well.

rose juniper

at 06:58 on December 25th, 2008

It's actually giftwrapping from a Sinterklaas party, the dutch Santa. Celebrated on the 5th of december.

rose juniper has contributed a photo to this story.

loveMER

at 23:37 on December 25th, 2008

This Christmas I felt it was necessary to not only make my wrapped gifts look attractive, but to also be resourceful and use supplies I had at home. This helped me to be more creative and also gave me an awesome feeling of having saved both time (in traffic and long lines, crowds at stores) and money (which we all need right now to survive).
For my sashes I used tissue paper from several Christmases ago which I folded in pleats and pieces of scrapbook paper that I had from a previous project. My labels were stickers from Papersource and the names on the gifts were also stickers, found at Walmart (also from a previous project). It was a great way of avoiding the generic plasticy bows and having them get smashed during shipping/transportation (my gifts were going to Kauai). I was very pleased with the results and so were my recepients!

loveMER has contributed a photo to this story.

l.million

at 07:39 on December 27th, 2008

white box that can be reused, along with some simple ribbon. less junk in our landfills!

l.million has contributed a photo to this story.

♥Maru-chan♥

at 08:17 on December 27th, 2008

Surprisingly, alot of the wrapping for the gifts in the photo I contributed was from wrapping from last year! The only thing we did was buy slightly bigger gift tags to go over the old ones and, voila!, reused gift wrapping. Not only does it save on trash/recycling, but you save a few cents, too.

♥Maru-chan♥ has contributed a photo to this story.

azzayindia

at 08:00 on December 28th, 2008

great story

Sugar Lotus Designs

at 10:19 on December 29th, 2008

Who doesn't like brown paper packages wrapped up in string? The blue fabric were a couple of pant cuffs saved from a hemming job. No sewing involved! They're just slipped over the box.

Sugar Lotus Designs has contributed a photo to this story.