How to Recycle Packaging to Pack Away Christmas

When your family opens Christmas gifts this year, think about how you can recycle some of the packaging and reuse it to pack up your decorations when you take them down.

We put two trees up every year, a big one in the living room, and a skinny one in the dining room. It makes decorating a lot easier each year if I pack away the ornaments for each tree separately. To preserve some family heirlooms and fragile ornaments, I package them within smaller boxes or wrapping tissue before placing them in the larger storage bin.

Lessons from the Past: Recycle at Christmas

Everyone used to laugh at how my grandmama opened her gifts so slowly, carefully cutting or peeling away tape to preserve the pretty wrapping paper. When we cleaned out her house after she passed away, there were still neatly pressed and folded stacks of papers. But, she also reused many of them to line shelves and drawers, and to wrap individual necklaces in her jewelry box.

Grandmama’s desire to save and reuse came partly from her childhood years in a big family, and partly from living through the Depression and World War II era. She was a notorious saver, and she inspired me to think of ways things could be reused instead of thrown away. Not only does it help the environment to recycle, but it saves money, too.

Now I save every scrap from the Christmas wrappings that I can think of a use for:

• Leftover tissue paper is great for wrapping fragile ornaments.
• Thick wrapping paper or folded gift bags make great layers between levels of ornaments in the storage bin, keeping the ones on top from shifting and falling between the ones on lower levels.
• Sturdy boxes and cookie tins make nice storage for fragile ornaments or sets with little pieces, like our Mexican nativity.
• Tiny jewelry boxes are perfect for storing ornament hooks and spare Christmas light bulbs.
• Large gift bags can hold items that need to be stored together but are too oddly shaped to fit into a box.
• Cardboard from gift boxes is perfect for wrapping light strings around to keep them from becoming a tangled jungle. Tie a leftover ribbon around it once the light string is wrapped around to keep it in place.

Not only will everything be cushioned and organized inside the larger storage boxes, but unpacking will be easier when we pull everything back out next year. So, don’t laugh if you see me gathering, smoothing, and folding all those wrappings on Christmas morning!

Do you have any tips for packing away Christmas? Share them with us below–we want to know!