Monday, February 17, 2014

Organizing the gift wrapping bin


Basement lighting + iPhone = poor photo but the gift wrapping supplies are slightly more organized 
Do you reuse gift bags? Do you have a storage system for them?

I started saving gift bags/wrapping after my very first baby shower. I'm pretty sure I have enough baby themed gift bags to last me every baby shower I ever have to attend and then some. After Christmas a couple of years later I found a wrapping paper Rubbermaid container on sale. Fast forward a few more years and my bin looked like this (minus the two smaller bins to the left):


My bin was so disorganized that I found myself stopping off at the store a couple times in the last few months out of "convenience" to grab gift wrap. With the boys' birthdays coming up and my nesting instinct in full swing, organizing my gift wrapping supplies was the perfect 30 minute project to make me feel like I got something big accomplished.

First step was roaming around my basement in search of unused/underused storage containers since part of my organizational problem stemmed from the fact that I had more supplies than what fit in the bin. Once I found a few other bins, I gave them a wash in the laundry tub and was ready to sort. Some of the really well used bags went in the garbage.

I now have an entire medium sized bin dedicated to gift bags, a small container with tissue paper,  a smaller bin with tape and some small rolls of ribbon, and a fairly neat stack of unused cards and cards to repurpose all in one spot. I even found a bag of balloons which will come in handy for the boys' birthday party in a couple of months.

I also reuse cards and recycle them into gift tags or other little projects. Extreme? It actually saves a bunch of time and money. Now I have no excuses to buy more gift wrapping supplies!

2 comments:

Meghan said...

My in-laws love wrapping gifts in pretty paper and bags, and I always reuse it. It feels like such a waste to buy it. I keep all of the holiday themed papers and bags in with our xmas decorations and the rest of it in a drawer in the spare room.

Kristy said...

I thought about separating the Christmas wrapping into a different bin but couldn't find another empty one. Maybe that will be a phase 2 project once our basement is more cleared out :) I honestly don't feel like we'll ever run out of gift wrapping supplies now since the ones we give away are always replaced when we receive gifts on special occasions