Gift Wrapping

When it comes to gifting, there can be a lot of waste involved. There’s the packaging of the gift itself (think kids toys!), the wrapping paper, sticky tape, ribbon, gift bag, card, envelope… Ugh!

But this doesn’t have to be the case. There are plenty of unwasteful options available.

Firstly, it makes sense to use what you already have. I have a few rolls of gift wrap that I bought years ago that are tucked up in the hard to reach space in my linen cupboard that will not go to waste. I like to save this for gifting people we don’t know all that well. No one wants to be judged straight up by an odd looking gift!

I have a tendency to collect gift bags. So many gift bags! There’s Easter bags, Christmas bags, large bags, small bags! Every gift we give goes in a gift bag but, somehow, they end up back to us. We have a perpetual wine gift bag that floats around our families and has been doing so for many years!

Along with the gift bag collection we also have other gift wrapping related items that I’ve salvaged over the years with the hopes to reuse it. Ribbons, bows, paper that didn’t get ripped… I keep it for future use.

Boxes are perfect for popping gifts in. Decorate them with pencils, textas, stamps, anything. My kids and I love a good “crafternoon” session. This also works equally well with plain brown packing paper or clean fish and chip paper (if there’s such a thing!).

Have you heard about Furoshiki? It’s a Japanese art of wrapping with fabric. I gave this wrapping technique a go for Christmas last year and it was great. Easy and fun! My kids were equally excited about their gifts wrapped in fabric and my daughter even commented that it could be reused again! Lightweight fabrics are perfect and there are plenty of tutorials around for wrapping different sized and shaped gifts.

Kids paintings = gift wrap! Almost weekly the kids would bring home a painting they did at kinder. We take a photo of their paintings and save them digitally and the painting itself becomes wrapping paper. Grandparents love this!

And finally, you can always do what my mum did for my birthday earlier this year:

So with Mother’s Day coming up, what gift wrapping choices will you make? Do you have other suggestions for low waste gift wrapping? Please feel free to share!