Rethinking your wrap

Happy Holidays All!

Are you trying new eco-minded gift-wrap ideas?

This time of year is a real opportunity to reduce waste and eliminate some plastic with reusable wraps, and by creatively sourcing your paper.

I’m not talking about making yourself crazy by focusing on it, this time of year is complicated enough. More than anything else, it’s important to enjoy your friends and family. I‘m looking for new ideas to share, and to get the ball rolling toward a less wasteful celebration.

Many of us have always saved paper, bags and bows, but it seems we need to step it up a bit. In the last few years I’ve been using the copious amounts of newsprint paper I bring home from work as my wrapping paper. I like its warm look and dressing it up with nice fabric ribbons. And, with a little time and inspiration, I can get fancy with paint, stamps, or collage and if you have paper to play with, this one would be good fun with kids.

So reuse is great for sure. There must be a ton of alt-paper sources such as newspapers, magazines, and other paper products that might show up in your day-to-day rather than sending them directly to the recycling bin. This is definitely better than buying reams and reams of printed paper at the expense of our forests.

For the ultimate in reuse, the Japanese have a great tradition of fabric wrapping called “furoshiki.” It’s elegant and simple.

Seriously, I wish I’d known about it on those Christmas Eves that my brother would bring me his presents to wrap! (Not mentioning any names, but even he could manage this technique!)

I looked it up online for us and I’m sold! You can buy the fabric, the prices vary quite a bit and some of the Japanese furoshiki are so pretty, I would hang them in the house. (Online at Etsy HERE.)

But really, you can use virtually any fabric square to wrap a gift, as you will see in this quick HGTV video demonstrating how to tie them. The end result is bow and wrapping all in one.

I love it!

Here’s to Mother Nature, and hoping we can prove that saving the environment and having fun making the holidays pretty can go hand in hand.