AI Transcription Never fear, the regularly scheduled Monday newsletter will come out Tuesday. This week in the US, Monday is the federal holiday for Christmas. For some strange reason, people choose to use that day off work to spend it with friends and family rather than diligently waiting by their inbox for me to email them. Not gonna lie, that's a little insulting, but I'll get over it. In the meantime, I thought I'd send out my discussion thread that's normally just for paid subscribers to everyone.
Tho prior generations of my family would have saved and reused gift wrap, we no longer do. We do however, save tissue paper from gift bags and the bags themselves for re-use. My DIL has learned to take the bags immediately away from her children and hand them directly back to me. I’d like to step up your experiment - put the date of first use on the bag and see how many years it lasts. Especially good for an annual event like Christmas; birthdays may demand a richer data set.
PS very annoying when someone puts a stick-on label on a gift bag, which then has to be covered for the next recipient. Please use those little tie-on tags with the finicky little string. After all, you’ve saved the time it would take to use gift wrap.
😛. I imagine archeologists checking my back room in a thousand years trying to figure out what those bags were used for… “Moldy bag, mostly in good condition with motives of a strange fat guy in a red suit. Probably used to keep cocaine for the bears…”
⬆️this. Exactly. (Except for the DIL bit...my son’s only 13 - so I’m the one taking the bags immediately from my own children) Although, to be fair, I’ve reused a gift-bag with a stick-on label, by covering it with another label. Done it twice so far with the same gift bag!
I think you fold a piece of cloth, right sided together, stitch up both sides to form a bag, then fold over the top around a cord creating a channel, tie the cord ends together, turn right side out. Put gift in and pull cord tight. You can thread a card onto the cord, and you’re done! Can be washed and dried if they become soiled.
My mother sewed them. We still use them. One of them was used for my eldest's third birthday. It has three small candles sewn on it. It has red trim, so I use it for Christmas. The others are red and green.
Our fam is a combo of rippers and slo-mo unwrappers. But mom and dad do keep a sturdy box in which came the star for their first Christmas tree together, in1957. Mom wraps someone's gift in it every year. Every year we all wonder, who gets "the box"?😁
I save gift bags, boxes and nice ribbons. My husband's grandmother saved wrapping paper. She also hung her shoes around the door frame, so what do I know?
I once got in trouble for carefully unwrapping my gifts at my wedding shower. I grew up in a 4 person family. We watched each other open gifts. Made Christmas last longer.
I am amazed you are gentle enough to remove it fully intact. It's deliberately designed to be torn easily. You must have the stable hands of a surgeon.
Thanks to the wrapping paper “sales” by elementary school kids every year while mine were in school,when if any classroom didn’t get sales by 100% of the students in a given class the whole class was not allowed the pizza party, I have many, many rolls of crummy but expensive wrapping paper. So I shred it with glee. At the same time as the school was teaching kids that failing to sell single use wrapping paper would make them the class pariah who deprived the whole class of a special reward, they were beating it into the kids that paper must be conserved. As a result, our gifts to the kids were wrapped in the overpriced paper, and their gifts to us were wrapped in grocery bag paper AND in one case a Tampax box and in the other, a chewing gum box. I still have at least a dozen large wrapping paper rolls and my youngest child is 20.
That's a lot of guilt and manipulation attached to wrapping paper. Now I'm grateful my school just had us sell candy bars. I don't still have those hanging around 20 years later. Except on my waistline.
Dec 26, 2022·edited Dec 26, 2022Liked by James Breakwell
We recycle the gift bags until they literally are falling apart and have been taped together one too many times. I think this year I will finally have to buy some new ones. I don't like them in general, simply because they can be "opened" so quickly, but stuffing tissue paper in them is obviously less time consuming if you have many to wrap. We use a combo of each.
We've had one of those huge garbage-sized gift bags for at least 7 or 8 years now - we stuff paper and laundry products in it for our daughter and husband. That bag is faithfully saved as they aren't always easy to find.
We do NOT save paper, no matter how pretty. We just rip it off and then throw it into a big pile in the middle of the room for the kitties to jump into. We do save bows and clothing boxes though, if they aren't smashed or torn.
Who knew there would be family traditions for wrapping paper and gift bag disposal?
I’m a tear that paper into its shreds to small to see. However I am a bow saver. I carefully remove them, and out they come for any gifts that require a bow. Gift bags are the best! I usually save the tissue paper. I smooth out the paper, fold it to fit in the collapsed bag and it’s ready for next years toy haul.
You didn’t mention the Christmas Stocking debate... Do you wrap the gifts that go into the stocking or do they go in unwrapped, also when do you go through the stockings before opening the gifts under the tree or at the end??? We put the gifts in the stocking unwrapped and we always open them first before we have breakfast it holds the kids off from going crazy to open the gifts before mom and dad have their coffee and we still do this even though our kids are all much older. We tear paper, but we save tissue paper and the boxes that you get clothes in, we will reuse them for a couple of years till they start looking haggard. We do gift bags but it’s usually just to keep small items all together and we wrap the gifts that go into the gift bags and we always save the gift bags. My 4 daughters love to reminisce about past gifts they have gotten in the gift bags. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.
Pictures of the room first, then socks-not wrapped, then “under the sock” gifts from Santa, always wrapped in colored comics newspaper. Then we’d get something to eat—Tea Ring bread and juice—and take it back to the tree and then take turns opening gifts, the youngest first.
If they’re paper, we tear. If they’re bags (which the guys always want because they’re lazy) we save. Just like you said, we reuse every year till they fall apart. God love the dollar store. I hope you and your’s had a great holiday. We got started at noon and went back to bed at 2, lol.
We were encouraged to take our time so all observers got a look at what we were getting. At Christmas we were allowed to do our socks at the same time, but after that we went round-robin while my mother kept track of who got what from whom—you know, for thank you notes later.
As kids we didn’t save wrap (gift bags not yet invented) but my mom may have ordered we be careful with certain desirable wrapping so she could save it. We also saved the cards for future use (real Christmas cards saved from previous years with the back taken off were our name tags). Yeah, we were weird. My sister and I continue this tradition, but less so now that gift bags are so much easier. And yes, we save the bags. How can you throw away a perfectly beautiful bag? And we DO reuse the stuff. I haven’t bought new bows in 15 years!
Rip it open and toss it into the trash bag you have standing by! My daughter has to get EVERY SINGLE PIECE of paper off the box before she'll open it. Drives me insane!
My heritage is actually the third group. I was raised, to make sure unwrapping does not destroy the paper, store the paper in my mom’s bed box and actually reuse it. And somehow sometimes, I still do it this way.
For 60+ years of my 70+ we always carefully saved wrapping paper. We'd carefully pick outstanding patterns that brought joy to some family member and then reuse it the following year. However, the last few years, we've quit using wrapping paper at all. We've replaced it with gift bags that are also saved and carefully treasured for the next year. Many bags have special meanings and getting a certain bag can count as a special victory the following year. (grin)
Tho prior generations of my family would have saved and reused gift wrap, we no longer do. We do however, save tissue paper from gift bags and the bags themselves for re-use. My DIL has learned to take the bags immediately away from her children and hand them directly back to me. I’d like to step up your experiment - put the date of first use on the bag and see how many years it lasts. Especially good for an annual event like Christmas; birthdays may demand a richer data set.
PS very annoying when someone puts a stick-on label on a gift bag, which then has to be covered for the next recipient. Please use those little tie-on tags with the finicky little string. After all, you’ve saved the time it would take to use gift wrap.
Some of those bags will outlast the pyramids.
😛. I imagine archeologists checking my back room in a thousand years trying to figure out what those bags were used for… “Moldy bag, mostly in good condition with motives of a strange fat guy in a red suit. Probably used to keep cocaine for the bears…”
⬆️this. Exactly. (Except for the DIL bit...my son’s only 13 - so I’m the one taking the bags immediately from my own children) Although, to be fair, I’ve reused a gift-bag with a stick-on label, by covering it with another label. Done it twice so far with the same gift bag!
Ripped up , crumpled up, then basketball shot into the trash bag dad’s holding. Is it just us??
This is the way.
That's our preferred method!
We use homemade cloth bags with Christmas patterns, reused every year.
This is brilliant and I'm shocked I'm 37 years old and have never heard of anyone doing this before.
If you like I’ll send pictures of some of them (if I can figure out how to do it.)
That's a great idea. Can you please share the pattern? My wife is a sewing person.
No pattern - my sister just figured it out!
I think you fold a piece of cloth, right sided together, stitch up both sides to form a bag, then fold over the top around a cord creating a channel, tie the cord ends together, turn right side out. Put gift in and pull cord tight. You can thread a card onto the cord, and you’re done! Can be washed and dried if they become soiled.
If my mom were alive she would be doing this! She was a great seamstress. Very cool idea!
We have some of those!
Where did you get them?
My mother sewed them. We still use them. One of them was used for my eldest's third birthday. It has three small candles sewn on it. It has red trim, so I use it for Christmas. The others are red and green.
So lovely to find someone else who does this!
Our fam is a combo of rippers and slo-mo unwrappers. But mom and dad do keep a sturdy box in which came the star for their first Christmas tree together, in1957. Mom wraps someone's gift in it every year. Every year we all wonder, who gets "the box"?😁
A permanent gift box. I love it!
I save gift bags, boxes and nice ribbons. My husband's grandmother saved wrapping paper. She also hung her shoes around the door frame, so what do I know?
I once got in trouble for carefully unwrapping my gifts at my wedding shower. I grew up in a 4 person family. We watched each other open gifts. Made Christmas last longer.
I reuse the saved wrapping paper. Most of my family of origin did it that way. We sometimes get an extra "awww, I remember this paper!"
Eventually, we stopped giving gifts to each other as adults. Too exhausting.
I am amazed you are gentle enough to remove it fully intact. It's deliberately designed to be torn easily. You must have the stable hands of a surgeon.
Thanks to the wrapping paper “sales” by elementary school kids every year while mine were in school,when if any classroom didn’t get sales by 100% of the students in a given class the whole class was not allowed the pizza party, I have many, many rolls of crummy but expensive wrapping paper. So I shred it with glee. At the same time as the school was teaching kids that failing to sell single use wrapping paper would make them the class pariah who deprived the whole class of a special reward, they were beating it into the kids that paper must be conserved. As a result, our gifts to the kids were wrapped in the overpriced paper, and their gifts to us were wrapped in grocery bag paper AND in one case a Tampax box and in the other, a chewing gum box. I still have at least a dozen large wrapping paper rolls and my youngest child is 20.
That's a lot of guilt and manipulation attached to wrapping paper. Now I'm grateful my school just had us sell candy bars. I don't still have those hanging around 20 years later. Except on my waistline.
We were box savers too so if it was sturdy enough for reuse, it was saved. We also carefully fold tissue paper for reuse.
We recycle the gift bags until they literally are falling apart and have been taped together one too many times. I think this year I will finally have to buy some new ones. I don't like them in general, simply because they can be "opened" so quickly, but stuffing tissue paper in them is obviously less time consuming if you have many to wrap. We use a combo of each.
We've had one of those huge garbage-sized gift bags for at least 7 or 8 years now - we stuff paper and laundry products in it for our daughter and husband. That bag is faithfully saved as they aren't always easy to find.
We do NOT save paper, no matter how pretty. We just rip it off and then throw it into a big pile in the middle of the room for the kitties to jump into. We do save bows and clothing boxes though, if they aren't smashed or torn.
Who knew there would be family traditions for wrapping paper and gift bag disposal?
I’m a tear that paper into its shreds to small to see. However I am a bow saver. I carefully remove them, and out they come for any gifts that require a bow. Gift bags are the best! I usually save the tissue paper. I smooth out the paper, fold it to fit in the collapsed bag and it’s ready for next years toy haul.
You didn’t mention the Christmas Stocking debate... Do you wrap the gifts that go into the stocking or do they go in unwrapped, also when do you go through the stockings before opening the gifts under the tree or at the end??? We put the gifts in the stocking unwrapped and we always open them first before we have breakfast it holds the kids off from going crazy to open the gifts before mom and dad have their coffee and we still do this even though our kids are all much older. We tear paper, but we save tissue paper and the boxes that you get clothes in, we will reuse them for a couple of years till they start looking haggard. We do gift bags but it’s usually just to keep small items all together and we wrap the gifts that go into the gift bags and we always save the gift bags. My 4 daughters love to reminisce about past gifts they have gotten in the gift bags. Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas.
Pictures of the room first, then socks-not wrapped, then “under the sock” gifts from Santa, always wrapped in colored comics newspaper. Then we’d get something to eat—Tea Ring bread and juice—and take it back to the tree and then take turns opening gifts, the youngest first.
Stockings first. Mix of wrapped & unwrapped.
We always did the stockings Christmas Eve, used to save wrapping paper, but now use gift bags and no wrapping paper (just tissue).
You tear into that paper like it morally offended you making a suggestion how your favorite conspiracy is totally wrong.
If they’re paper, we tear. If they’re bags (which the guys always want because they’re lazy) we save. Just like you said, we reuse every year till they fall apart. God love the dollar store. I hope you and your’s had a great holiday. We got started at noon and went back to bed at 2, lol.
We were encouraged to take our time so all observers got a look at what we were getting. At Christmas we were allowed to do our socks at the same time, but after that we went round-robin while my mother kept track of who got what from whom—you know, for thank you notes later.
As kids we didn’t save wrap (gift bags not yet invented) but my mom may have ordered we be careful with certain desirable wrapping so she could save it. We also saved the cards for future use (real Christmas cards saved from previous years with the back taken off were our name tags). Yeah, we were weird. My sister and I continue this tradition, but less so now that gift bags are so much easier. And yes, we save the bags. How can you throw away a perfectly beautiful bag? And we DO reuse the stuff. I haven’t bought new bows in 15 years!
Rip it open and toss it into the trash bag you have standing by! My daughter has to get EVERY SINGLE PIECE of paper off the box before she'll open it. Drives me insane!
My heritage is actually the third group. I was raised, to make sure unwrapping does not destroy the paper, store the paper in my mom’s bed box and actually reuse it. And somehow sometimes, I still do it this way.
For 60+ years of my 70+ we always carefully saved wrapping paper. We'd carefully pick outstanding patterns that brought joy to some family member and then reuse it the following year. However, the last few years, we've quit using wrapping paper at all. We've replaced it with gift bags that are also saved and carefully treasured for the next year. Many bags have special meanings and getting a certain bag can count as a special victory the following year. (grin)