Recycled Gift Bags

posted on June 18, 2009 by Catherine Mann

Confession time. I’m not as good at recycling as I would like to be. I’m an unorganized person to begin with when it come to physical space. So the idea of separating my trash into multiple bins sends my ADHD brain into overdrive. (I can barely keep track of when it’s trash day in time to get the can to the curb.)

But I do have some recycling things I’ve managed to do over the years… some standard, some maybe quirky, and some thrifty. I re-use all grocery bags – either when I return to the store or use them to line trash cans. All clothes, furniture, household items that we’ve outgrown go to Good Will or church mission store. I do know where to drop off broken down cardboard boxes and fill up the mini-van for the kids to make a drop off. We had a compost heap for a while – which the kids loved!

And then there are, of course, my recycled gift bags… yep, I admit it. I’m one of those people who fishes bows back out of the trash and snatches up the gift bag once the present is opened and even flatten tissue paper back out. I’ve gotten quite inventive of the years at figuring out ways to put a stick name tag over any writing that may have been on the bag when it was given to me and my family. In fact, the very reason I thought of this? Today’s my son’s 21st birthday! (Happy birthday, sweetie!!) And as we were checking out the old Christmas paper I used to wrap his bag, the kids reminded me of how Susan, Katherine (dear friends) and I had a gift bag we passed around so often between our families, we started signing and dating inside the bag! We lost the bag after about ten uses (it was pretty tattered.) But I’ve been thinking it’s time to boldly, proudly start announcing my recycling by autographing the bags again!

So what about y’all? Any creative ideas for wrapping a gift? Do you recycle gift bags? Go for new only? Or do you present the gift “in the raw”?! 😉

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *