Low-Waste Reusable Gift Wrap Ideas
Brightly colored wrapping paper looks great under the tree, but also creates a mountain of waste on Christmas morning. Here are some eco-friendly reusable gift wrap ideas to wrap your gifts in this year, but keep all that trash out of the landfill.
If looking at the piles of wasted gift-wrap after all the presents are opened makes you feel guilty, this year, why not try some of these cool, reusable gift wrap tips instead? Not only will you reduce the waste going to the landfill after Christmas, but you’ll also save money as well!
Some of these tips do require an initial purchase, but just have the recipients return the wrappings to you after opening, so you can use them again next year. If you can sew little cloth gift bags, that’s great, but if you’re not a gifted seamstress (which the author is not!), there are plenty of other eco-friendly options out there. Other ideas include packaging that is part of the gift (I loved the spaghetti strainer idea!), or re-used natural wrappings that can then be used to start a Christmas evening fire in the fireplace, or as mulch in the garden.
Check out the tips below for more fun ideas for reusable gift wrap:
On a Christmas morning long, long ago as I sat in our living-room floor with a steaming cup of coffee in my hands, my heart was full as I listened to the excited chatter of our children as they opened their gifts. But soon after that gift-opening frenzy I stared with dismay at the mountains of trash that was left behind. As I loaded up multiple mammoth trash bags with all that trash I thought there had to be a better way…. So I set out to change the way I wrap my gifts….
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We like to give gift baskets filled with homemade goodness such as homemade Pumpkin Granola in reusable glass containers. We always give special thought to the “basket” portion of the gift and try to package it all in something that’s also useful and can be made part of the gift. One year we made homemade pasta sauce & spaghetti and placed it all in stainless-steel spaghetti strainers….
Wrapping smaller gifts is quick & easy using colorful bandannas…. And bandannas are great for wrapping those odd-shaped gifts plus they’re so versatile and inexpensive it’s easy to have many different colors to adorn the gifts under your tree for a fun splash of holiday color.
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For chunky gifts I have some Christmas-print fabrics that I purchased very inexpensively after Christmas several years ago. I spread the fabric out, put the gift in the middle, gather up the fabric on the sides and tie the four corners – there’s no ribbon required most of the time and it looks great under the tree.
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And of course there’s the old standby of wrappings from Christmases of days gone by. C’mon now, sing it with me: “Brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorite things!” Since we always have a blazing fire going on Christmas morning, a few of the smaller gifts…are wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with white cotton string…. Sometimes I’ll cut the paper with the fun scissors that cuts pretty shapes onto the edges. They look great and after the gift is opened the paper and string can be burned right then, right there.All in all my reusable gift wrapping still gives me the pretty and festive look under the tree that I crave. But my heart is happy since unlike that Christmas so long ago there’s no trash being hauled to the curb. After the gifts are opened my family is happy to return all the wrappings to me and I just fold them & put them away to be used year after year.
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For more reusable gift wrapping ideas, plus photos, visit the Taylor Made Ranch Homestead Blog….
We wish you a very Merry Christmas from all of us at the Sustainable Living Report!
