Sustainable Gift Wrap

It is the gift giving season. Whether you celebrate Hanukkah, Kwanza, Yule, Christmas or some other gifting holiday, you’ve got to wrap the presents. And of course on the day of the unwrapping there can be a large pile of pretty paper and ribbon in the middle of the living room. It seems like such a waste especially if you wrapped the gift only hours before. Some use newspaper, which is noble but not as pretty. Some use grocery bags – again just not as appealing. Then of course you can get swayed by the green marketing of 100% recycled gift wrap which is still only usable once. How about just saving that pretty paper and using for something else throughout the year? I found online suggestions for shredding it to be used as packaging filler or making it into cards for next year or even fold it up and use it again to wrap gifts. Really, who does any of this? This just adds to the junk cluttering up your house each year.

There are those great reusable gift bags. I’ve had some for years and hold on to them to reuse for gift giving. But usually I would still by the tissue paper to hide the gift and dress up the bag which is again paper and not easily used for other stuff. And after awhile they get a little worn or rip. Is there a better way to wrap a gift that has less waste?

Yup.

About 10 years ago my Mom got a gift from a friend that was wrapped in a beautiful fabric bag. Mom had gotten back into sewing and decided to try making gift bags herself as it seemed like an easy, hard to mess up sewing project to start with. Since then I have not given a gift wrapped in paper nor have I received a gift from my family that was wrapped in paper. In the beginning the bags were fairly simple. Just some holiday fabric sewn into an appropriately sized rectangle with a cloth ribbon attached near the top. She got me into sewing and I started making my own as well. It was great fun picking out fabric and getting practice with a sewing machine. After the first few years of making lots and lots of bags we had a good variety of sizes and designs to pick from. The bags used for family gifts stayed in the family and were reused year after year. Of course we wound up giving away bags when we gave gifts to friends but we considered that part of the gift. Spreading the message and hopefully inspiring others to do the same.

With the large collection bags we weren’t sewing as frantically to get ready for each new season so we got more creative. Pretty ribbon and decorative elements bought at thrift stores were added to the bags. Then Mom got into quilting and she started making bags out of simple quilt squares and adding appliqués to the bags. There are other ways to modify the bags that I just haven’t gotten around to such as using buttons, zippers, making drawstrings, or box bottomed bags. You are only limited by your imagination.