I love wrapping Christmas presents. But I haven’t bought wrapping paper in over a decade. Even before I found zerowaste as a concept, I enjoyed the thrift and challenge of reusing old paper, working around tears, tape, and crinkles. I’ve always been kinda weird so my family went along with it, until it’s now part of our tradition and they help me gather up the big scraps after everything’s been opened.

My advice, if you want to try this:

• Tape the paper to the present first so you can sort of cinch the paper tight. That pulls a lot of the wrinkles and folds out of it and makes it look nice.

• Fold it at the corners for a sharper look.

• Use the gift/name tags to cover any damaged spots. I use the ones charities send in the mail after you donate once five years ago. Or blank bits of the sticky paper from the sheets of mailing labels.

• Consider other sources of paper - I’ve also used posters that didn’t print right and regular newspaper

Benefits/reasons my family puts up with it:

• It can be surprisingly nostalgic to see paper from last year and remember projects and things we gave back then. I’ve kept some pieces going, showing up again and again in smaller pieces for like five years now.

• Fancy paper: I try to prioritize the really fancy/pretty stuff from years past, the shiny foil papers etc. it’s nice to get extra use out of that.

• Humor: most of us live separately now so everyone tends to wrap their presents with their own paper, which kinda indicates who it’s from. Except me - my presents look like they came from everyone else, which is sometimes surprising or funny.