great green gift wrapping idea!!

[rosey7415]

i borrowed this great idea from the "Dollar Stretcher Tips" and Leslie M. (just want to give credit where it is due.) i thought that this is a wonderful idea and hope that it will benefit others.


Enviro-Friendly Christmas Wrap

Most people can buy large gift bags at dollar stores, some
people prefer to make their own reusable fabric gift bags, and
we can all buy cheap wrapping paper. I do gift bags and
wrapping a little differently. When I need a large gift bag, I
buy the "green bags" or canvas grocery bags that almost every
store sells to reduce using plastic grocery bags. They are
priced at 99 cents virtually everywhere they are sold. I use
that as the gift bag, filling the bag with the gift, tissue
paper, and pretty ribbon. It avoids tossing wrapping paper
into landfills, and costs the same as buying a bag from a
dollar store or making your own fabric gift bags. Because the
recipient can then use the bag to carry their groceries, and
thus continues to reduce waste, it's the gift that keeps on
giving! I prefer to buy the canvas bags that have the hard
plastic inserts on the bottom of the bag, as they are sturdier
for heavy groceries. Sometimes I get more compliments and
appreciation on the "gift bag," then I do on the gift! The
bags come in many colors, depending on the retailer. My
grocery store sells green canvas bags. I plan on filling them
with red tissue paper for Christmas gifts.
Leslie M. in West Palm Beach, FL

[phoeny_moonstar]

What an awesome idea!

[sunshine]

Great idea . . . I've made my own fabric bags and we reuse them year after year. . but I never thought to use the grocery totes as gift bag!

[geckoace]

thats a good idea. some places like pier 1 even have some really snazzy ones

[LynnLC]

what a great idea! I am so doing that!

[oct2667us]

Great Idea!!!

[Nishu]

That's a great idea! I might use them to put together the gift baskets for the girls' teachers.

I don't know how appropriate this would be for Christmas, but the funny papers from the Sunday edition work well for gift wrap. I'm going to take my brown paper bags, turn them inside out so the print is inside, and then let the girls pretty them up.

[kittykatstrong]

What a great idea, I got this idea out of this book [ame="http://www.amazon.com/o/ASIN/0061122777/ref=pd_rvi_gw_1/102-1075642-7480118"]Amazon.com: Simply Green Giving: Create Beautiful and Organic Wrappings, Tags, and Gifts from Everyday Materials: Danny Seo: Books[/ame]

You have shirt and use the sleeve to wrap a bottle with. I will be doing this with my dads gift because all he wears are jean and plaid shirts. I am not giving him a bottle so I am using the middle part with the buttons. I think it will look really cute.

[RetiredVeryEarly]

That is a fabulous idea, using cloth shopping bags to wrap gifts. A local store (Woodmans) has green bags so that would work great with red ribbon. About 17 years ago I gave my mom and siblings cloth shopping bags for Christmas as part of their present. But they were fancy ones, a fundraiser for a high school environmental group, and a little ahead of their time, so they cost about $10 each. I was in charge of the Environmental Club at my corporate campus then and strong-armed people into buying them. :-) Now I feel guilty they were so much, and they are so cheap now.

[Momto2Boyz]

Last week I bought a huge order of the re-usable fabric grocery totes for all my gifts! Glad to know its catching on and I won't look like a total weirdo for doing this! I figured then, it was two gifts in one and maybe I could get some family members who don't use them, to start!

[vegan_mom77]

One of the reasons I don't like the secular Chirstmas (to which I refer as Xmas) is all of the waste involved. Let's celebrate the birth of Jesus by trashing the planet with which God has blessed us. I was raised with saving and reusing paper.We had to open at the tape (with a sharp knife when we were old enough) so it could be used again. My mom even made cloth bags years before I was born that she still uses (I'm 31). For our birthdays, we got Sunday comics which we were allowed to rip. When my parents had access to recycling facilites they would recycle the retired paper.

My husband (whom I have trained in the art of caring for the earth and has since taught me a few things) grew up with a rip fest. Everybody tore into their presents while everybody else tore into theirs. (We took turns opening one present at a time, unless my sister and I had like gifts that we opened together. It lasted longer that way and everybody could see what everybody got.) The end result was a pile of expensive paper that was going to forever sit into the landfill. Ugh. I was (and still am) apalled and disgusted the first Christmas morning I spent there about seven years ago.

(A couple of years ago, in Vegetarian Times, I read the stats on the amount of paper used and that even oil was used to print most wrapping paper. Ick. Since then, I've used even less and I don't even buy it, I just reuse what I get.)

Anyway, I had had this idea, too. I saw thesmall bags that we have from Whole Foods and thought they would make great gift bags.

Maybe for my in-laws we'll just buy a whole bunch of those. They have a zillion uses. Three of them are currently being used as toy bags for my daughter. (On the plus side with my in-laws we have trained them to recycle. We lived with them for four and a half months between my husband's seminary graduation and him/us being blessed with a church. Recycling is a large part of whom I am and we continued to do it and taught my in-laws to do so. They even put in a few things that would go that I hadn't thought of. They still use paper plates though...)

I digress.

[rainbowgc]

Well you just cured by wrapping blues!

[Minner77]

One of the reasons I don't like the secular Chirstmas (to which I refer as Xmas) is all of the waste involved. Let's celebrate the birth of Jesus by trashing the planet with which God has blessed us. I was raised with saving and reusing paper.We had to open at the tape (with a sharp knife when we were old enough) so it could be used again. My mom even made cloth bags years before I was born that she still uses (I'm 31). For our birthdays, we got Sunday comics which we were allowed to rip. When my parents had access to recycling facilites they would recycle the retired paper.

My husband (whom I have trained in the art of caring for the earth and has since taught me a few things) grew up with a rip fest. Everybody tore into their presents while everybody else tore into theirs. (We took turns opening one present at a time, unless my sister and I had like gifts that we opened together. It lasted longer that way and everybody could see what everybody got.) The end result was a pile of expensive paper that was going to forever sit into the landfill. Ugh. I was (and still am) apalled and disgusted the first Christmas morning I spent there about seven years ago.

(A couple of years ago, in Vegetarian Times, I read the stats on the amount of paper used and that even oil was used to print most wrapping paper. Ick. Since then, I've used even less and I don't even buy it, I just reuse what I get.)

Anyway, I had had this idea, too. I saw thesmall bags that we have from Whole Foods and thought they would make great gift bags.

Maybe for my in-laws we'll just buy a whole bunch of those. They have a zillion uses. Three of them are currently being used as toy bags for my daughter. (On the plus side with my in-laws we have trained them to recycle. We lived with them for four and a half months between my husband's seminary graduation and him/us being blessed with a church. Recycling is a large part of whom I am and we continued to do it and taught my in-laws to do so. They even put in a few things that would go that I hadn't thought of. They still use paper plates though...)

I digress.

We were raised to carefully slit the paper, just like you! And we also waited patiently as each opened a present one at a time. In my family now we still wait patiently, but in our early years of marriage it drove my hubby nuts that I would so carefully open each present, so he'd just reach down and rip my package open! I think he's come around on this now, since he's so committed environmentally otherwise.

I remember wrapping presents each year with paper from previous years. Sometimes it was, heaven forbid, even a bit wrinkled, but we used it anyway. I actually thought it was fun to see some names on the To/From tags -- such as finding some really old paper that said "From Nana" on it after my dear grandmother had passed away. Silly, perhaps, but I remember it warmly from my childhood.

[bumplett]

I use comics from recycled newspapers.

I really do like the idea of the green bags as a gift bag though.

[homesteadmamma]

What a neat idea. I also use comics along with cloth bags. Thanks for sharing.