3 Alternatives to Wrapping Paper

My husband has wrapped every one of my gifts in New Yorker covers. I love it. We started using our sons artwork too – i mean how many scribbles do i need from daycare!

I save and reuse gift bags until they are worn out. When our girls were little, Santa left the presents unwrapped under the tree after they went to bed. My parents did the same thing and we saved gift wrap to use again.

I have zero problem buying some Christmas wrapping paper. I mean, newspaper? I would argue you can just get your news on the internet and save that daily or weekly waste. Also, newspaper rubs off on things.

I do use wrapping paper–but I save lots of it (bows, bags) to reuse. A sturdy bow or bag can be used three or four times with no problem–my boyfriend’s gift this year is arriving in the same bag it has the past two years. I often write names directly on presents, or put stickers over old labels. And this year I’m using the scraps to make paper chains for next year’s tree. But in future, I may try some of these in lieu of the traditional paper.

Love these ideas! Thanks for this post!

We had a super fun tradition as kids that was born out of a mother’s desperation and late night creativity. My mom was up the night before Christmas years and years ago and ran out of wrapping paper. It was too late to go buy more and she had a house full of sleeping children so she was stuck. Instead of panicking she grabbed some scratch paper and starting writing out clues…and she hid the unwrapped gifts. My youngest brother wasn’t reading yet, so his clues had to be pictures and she even took the time to draw out all of his! In the morning, high on Santa adrenaline and a lack of sleep, we gathered around the tree and my mom handed us each clue #1, along with our stockings. And we all got to go on the most exciting scavenger hunts ever! We lived in a pretty small trailer, and she had to hide for four kids, but she got creative. Gifts (and the next clues) were found in cupboards and under tables and with the dog food and in the shower. She tailored them to our age levels (impressive considering we ranged from a toddler who couldn’t read to preteens), used puns and jokes, and made it all flow together. We went wild for it! And it became our thing…from then on my mom skipped the wrapping paper and took the time to plan a hunt for each of us. I can only imagine how much more time and energy that took, especially for an overworked single mom, but it was always so thrilling and fun and we talk about it to this day. We continued our hunting up until my youngest brother and I were teens and it made Christmas so magical <3

I save all tissue paper and ribbon and gift bags, and it’s more than enough.

I haven’t bought wrapping paper in years – makes me cringe just to think about it!

I always use brown paper bags from Trader Joes for wrapping gifts! Whether you stick with the TJ side or the plain side, they always look great and are sturdy enough for traveling with them long distances too.

Thank you so much for posting this. It’s so important for us to look at all the ways we can help curb unnecessary waste.

I try to reused bags. I drew little houses on them years ago and it creates a village the christmas train drives around. If I do need something wrapped instead of bagged, I’ll use shipping paper and draw the houses there.

Love all of these ideas. They look so neat!

Whenever we get a package in the mail, I try to repurpose the packaging, often into gift wrap. Those long, crinkled rolls of cheap recycled paper that are sometimes used as buffer inside packages make excellent wrapping paper (and also can serve as butcher paper or a drop cloth for my son’s craft projects). I also occasionally shop from a “green” website here in Germany (waschbaer.de) that mails things with no tape or glue, but instead binds all the packages with thread spun from textile remnants. These I save and use for EVERYTHING, but they make especially pretty ribbons on presents!

I’ve also embraced Furoshiki and use my son’s play scarves (just glorified squares of fabric) to wrap small stuff. The free weekly newspapers that get dumped on our building’s stoop are also a go-to for gift wrapping, as well as the occasional brown paper produce bag (tweaked with the aforementioned thread and a lot of decoration from my two-year-old!). I weirdly love wrapping gifts, and even more so with the challenge of trying to be zero- or low-waste about it.

About 12 years ago I made a bunch of pretty bags out of fabric. Some bought, but other vintage Christmas fabric from the thrift store. I made lots for us and for a gift made them for my mom who has 15 grandkids. Since then, most of my siblings have switched too. Its made everyone’s wrapping so easy. It is pretty, and the kids love getting the special bags that are extra cute. Vintage Christmas kitten fabric!!
For gift tags I used thick paper and had my kids do drawings on one side. A loop of yarn to attach with the ties of the bag. For our family this works great and we re use them each year. It makes wrapping so fast and it is amazing to have absolutely zero trash or recycling afterwards. I just stack the tags and bags nicely back in a bin for next year.
We also do this for birthdays— just cheerful fun fabrics.

TJs bag and some cute twine!

Oh my god this post just made me realise that I was literally dreaming about wrapping presents last night hahahaha.

Personally, I’ve gone for basic brown paper (kraft paper?) and am jazzing up with ribbons. I’ve got quite the collection from years of doing this, and it always looks SO pretty under the tree!

We have a great second hand art supply store in Chicago called The Waste Shed and I love picking up maps from there and wrapping gifts in maps! It’s fun to find a map of a city where a friend is from or a town two love birds are traveling to!

My grandparents always wrapped our gifts in the funny papers/comics. I loved and still live how it looks! We don’t get a newspaper but my neighbor does and she saves the comic section for me for this purpose. Then it all goes on the compost pile!

I love this article, everyone can do this and even something small as wrapping paper can make a difference. This year I bought beautiful fabric, used zig zag scissors to cut it into napkins, place mats and table runners and wrapped the presents using raffia as ribbon. Beautiful patterns and they can use them throughout the year, plus the raffia is compostable!

Fabric!! I have a bunch of fabric from failed sewing projects, including some Christmasy stuff, and I’m wrapping most of my presents with it. I watched some videos about Furoshiki-style wrapping and am attempting that – so far the presents look beautiful and I feel better about having a bit less waste this year.