This is Day 321 of the Green in 365 series!
By Hilary Kimes Bernstein of Accidentally Green
Christmas is only 5 weeks away, so you’ll be wrapping gifts before you know it!
Now’s an excellent time – if you have a spare moment – to start thinking about greener ways to wrap gifts. Since there’s no hurry yet, you can start looking through your house now for some creative ways to recycle and reuse materials for holiday gift wrapping.
Photo by Danilo Rizzuti
The fantastic news about gift giving is that you don’t have to use gift wrap with your gifts. Depending on your present, you could use fabric like colorful bandanas, dainty handkerchiefs, or silk scarfs.
For kitchen-related gifts, consider using cloth napkins or festive kitchen towels. Simply gather the material around your gift and secure with a coordinating ribbon.
If you like the convenience of giving gifts in bags, consider cloth bags – either the über-affordable reusable shopping bags, or heavier decorated cloth gift bags. Or, use a unique purse or makeup bag.
And as long as used paper gift bags don’t look tattered, happily reuse them.
(If your gift bags DO look used, don’t throw them away just yet – reuse them to carry things around in your own home. As long as they’re not ripped, they’re perfect for toting books back to the library or storing papers to sort.)
Baskets are such a pretty way to give gifts, and as long as they look like new, try regifting and recyling ones you already have. Fill your baskets with cool goodies and the contents will be the focus of the gift – not the basket.
If you do want to use gift wrap, you can get creative and recycle at the same time. Use pages from an atlas, or try using cool art from glossy magazine pages. If you have children, let them decorate butcher paper with bright markers or crayons.
A little embellishment
Don’t forget your finishing touches! As long as your bows are in good shape, reuse them. And look for other creative ways to top your gift … leftover pieces of ribbon, tulle, and raffia are great embellishments.
For gift tags, you can get a little crafty with old Christmas cards. Carefully cut out specific pictures or designs that match your wrapping, and write names on the blank side. You can either tape the tag on or use a hole punch and tie the tag on with a ribbon.
A little recycling
Once the holidays are here, keep in mind that you may be able to recycle wrapping paper – it all depends on your community’s recycling department. If wrapping paper is thicker and doesn’t include metallic or glittery designs, there’s a great chance it’s recyclable!
What creative materials do you love to use when wrapping gifts?
Hilary Kimes Bernstein is a Christ follower, wife, mama, and writer who blogs about making healthy decisions that honor God and happen to help the environment at Accidentally Green. She’s recently released her first eBook, First Bites: How To Instill Healthy Eating Habits During Your Baby’s First Year.
Find all the Green in 365 posts.
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Great ideas! About 10 years ago, we bought some holiday fabric on clearance in January and made a bunch of gift bags in various sizes. Relatives who received them used them to wrap gifts back to us the next year, and some of them also got inspired to make their own bags. Now we have a ton of them, a slightly different selection available every year. We also reuse wrapping paper and haven’t bought any in a long time–details are in my article on reducing holiday garbage.