It has been a great holiday week for us and I hope you all had a great one as well.  I could think of nothing better to do with our free time than to spend it with friends and family.  Even though we may have had a break from work, there is no break for going green.  This week’s green challenge was to recycle as much Christmas wrapping paper as possible.  It has been challenging, since we have a pretty large family, but have really enjoyed following through on this task.

We took in 12 garbage bags of wrapping, bows, boxes and miscellaneous junk.  Of that, we have been able to reduce the actual scrap down to 3 bags that we will need to find creative uses for.  I think we are going to try and make some homemade paper out of that and I will make sure to keep you all up to date with our progress on that.

We collected a pile of wrapping paper and tissue that we will be able to use throughout the year.  Also, we now have a box of ribbons and bows that will be usable for us throughout the year.  We did have a small amount of actual garbage that we had to throw away and some newspaper we put into the recycle bin.

Thanks for following us this week and let me know your green Christmas story in the comments area below.  Also, stay tuned for this week’s green challenge that will be posted later today.

This week’s green task has been very interesting and in the Christmas spirit.  Ashley’s green challenge for the week has been to recycle the wrapping paper we collect from our families.  We have collected all of the recyclables and started the process of going through this today.  Below is a picture outline of what we have done today.

I have to be honest that Ashley really came through and did most of this today.  Since we have been hit with a massive snowstorm in the upper mid-west, I have spent a good chunk of time clearing our driveway and my awesome wife spent a good part of the day separating useful paper, recycling, ribbons/bows, boxes and the scraps.  My count was off the other day and we ended up with 12 bags of gift wrapping.

She then went through all of the paper and separated all of the paper that can be reused as wrapping paper:

Then the tissue for bags:

Bows and ribbons:

We did end up with a little garbage:

We now have 4 bags of scraps that we are going to try and do some sort of craft with and a little newspaper that is going into the recycling.  I am not exactly sure what we are going to do with the scrap wrapping paper, but I would like to make some of our own homemade paper out of it.  I will keep you updated on what we decide to do with the scraps and let me know if you have any great ideas.  Also, I know it is a little late… but enjoy my online video Christmas Card. 

I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and wanted to give you all a quick update on this week’s green task.    For those just joining us, my wife assigns me a green challenge every week and this week’s challenge is to recycle wrapping paper.  This weekend is turning out to be very hectic because of a massive snow storm (we just got stuck pulling into our driveway), family fun (getting to spend some great time with our families) and general Christmas chaos…. So it is going to be a little short.   So, we have now harvested most of the wrapping paper we will accumulate.

We ended up leaving the fam’s house a bit earlier than expected that night and think we may have a bag or two left to collect, but other than that, we have all of the paper goods at our home.  As expected, we have a large amount of paper and we are not quite sure what the heck we are going to do.

About 14 garbage bags… 14 whole bags of wrapping paper.  We have gone through one bag and we were able to redeem about half of it as wrapping paper that we can use in the future.  If this rate continues, we will have 7 bags of unusable wrapping paper.  I will keep you updated on what happens.  Please let me know if you have any suggestions in the comments area below.

It is Christmas Eve day and the oomph behind this week’s task starts this evening.  On top of that, we are getting a snow storm right now.  My green task for the week is to recycle or reuse gift wrapping from our family’s houses and our own.  Tonight I will likely collect over 10 garbage bags of wrapping paper.  So, I will be driving around in my little Saturn, 12 inches deep in snow with 10 bags of wrapping paper.  What am I going to do?

I had contacted the City of Fargo and they indicated that gift wrapping cannot be recycled because of contaminants.  The bows, ribbons and foiled paper cause issues with recycling.  I was really counting on this since I know I am going to collect A TON of wrapping from the 40+ people we will be collecting wrapping from.

I think I will have to do some of the crafts I outlined in a previous post.  Actually, I think I am really looking forward to trying to make my own paper out of the stuff that cannot be used elsewhere.  Other than that, we will try to harvest usable wrapping paper out of what is left and go from there.

Tonight we wrapped our gifts and I am very proud of our green wrapping!  We only used newspaper, reused gift bags and reused gift wrapping to package our gifts.  I did use some tags that we already had, but expect to use homemade ones from now on.  If you have any green stories about this Christmas or previous holidays, please tell me about them in the comment area below.

1. Reuse what you can as your own wrapping paper.
2. Shred it and use this paper as packing material
3. Add wrapping paper to your compost.
4. Use it for various crafts.
5. Turn the white side out and use it for mail wrapping
6. Make your own Christmas ornaments using Christmas paper
7. Make your own artsy fartsy paper
8. Ask the local pet shelter or pet store if they can use the shredded paper for animal bedding
9. Shred it and use this as Easter Basket hay
10. Make your own items using this paper.
11. Use for Card Making
12. Use the decorative paper for scrapbooking if you have any scrap bookers in your family
13. Recycling…. But check your City to see if they take this as recycling.  I am not sure if my city takes this paper and am currently checking on that.  I HOPE they do because I know I am going to have a TON of paper from recycling all of the paper of our families.

Let us know your ideas in the comment area below.

It is Christmas week!  Yay!  What a great time of the year and I hope you all have a SPECTACULAR holiday season doing whatever you enjoy doing.  I am sure that many of you will exchange presents on Christmas Eve or Christmas Morning and this week’s task revolves around gift, or gift wrapping to be exact.  The green challenge that Ashley has assigned me this week to is to conserve, recycle and reuse wrapping paper.

This is going to be a very interesting task because part of this is to recycle the gift wrap that would otherwise be thrown away at our family’s houses.  We will likely spend some time at Ashley’s parents and we will also spend some time with some of my family.   My aunt has something like 15 grandchildren who all have gifts to unwrap.  This does not include the 9 kids of hers, their spouses and the various other people who may open a gift over Christmas.  My estimation is that we will be taking the used gift wrapping of about 30 people this Christmas season.

As of this moment, I have absolutely no idea what I am going to do with it and I am not even sure the city of Fargo will take it as recycling.  I have previously written about what I can do with junk mail, and I am sure there will be some similarities.   This week’s task is to collect all gift wrapping and find a way to either recycle or reuse this waste.   Please let me know if you have any unique ideas for me on this one.