One Hundred Dollars a Month

I love the way all of the presents look under the tree—brightly wrapped and bowed.  I don’t like the garbage bags full of paper that head for recycling afterward, though.  In fact, it kind of makes me feel bad as a human that all of those resources were used up for what amounted to about 30 minutes of ripping and tearing joy.  So, this year, I am going to find a way to re-use some of the paper that would otherwise be destined for immediate recycling.  It makes me feel a little bit less guilty about being a consumer.

If you want to hop on board, here are a couple of ideas to help you give a second life to wrapping paper:

1. Make DIY seedling pots.  You don’t need huge pieces of paper for this project, so it’s ideal.  It’s actually mindless work, so I usually pop in a movie and make piles of them.
2. Put it through the paper shredder and you have instant colorful confetti to use in other wrapping all year long.  Stash the shreds in a big Ziploc bag so that you don’t find pieces of it sneaking out everywhere.
3. Save the pieces for book covers for the kids’ textbooks.   This is probably best for those wrapping papers that are festive without being overtly Christmas-y…unless you have one of those kids that would carry a Rudolf covered Algebra book, in which case, I say I like your kid already.
4. Line drawers or cupboards.  My grandmother always lined her cupboards with old newspaper—even though contact paper was under $5, she never could get on board with buying something when she already had something that worked perfectly well.  I think we could all use a little bit more of that mentality.
5. Make fun pen and pencils holders.  Save and wash the can next time you open beans {or whatever} and then use the wrapping paper to decorate the outside.  If you want to give it a more durable finish, I recommend a little Modge Podge top coat.
6. Save it and make DIY name tags.  Cut circles, squares…even trapezoids, if you are so inclined and use them as name tags next year.  Use a hole punch to punch a hole and feed some ribbon through it—then you can tie it onto your gift easy peasy.
7. Use the scrapes to make your own Christmas thank-you cards.  Festive and free.
8. Use it to wrap delicate Christmas decorations before you store them for the year.
9. Use it to make a piñata for your kiddo’s next birthday party.  Again, this is one of those that you can use the less overt Christmas paper for.  Brightly colored papers and/or patterns would work great.
10. Frame it in cheap-o dollar store frames for instant Christmas décor next year.
11. If you are a scrapbooker, save the wrapping paper to use in your scrapbooking.
12. Make a paper count-down chain and stash it in Christmas décor so it will be ready for the kids to tear off each day next year.

Do you already re-use your wrapping paper?  How do you give it a second life?

~Mavis