Gift Bags vs. Gift Wrap

[athelind]

Some people have an angel on one shoulder, and a devil on the other.

I have a dragon on each: one dressed in tie-dye and flip-flops, the other dressed in a classic Santa costume.

Environmental Scientist Dragon loves Gift Bags: present packaging that is fast, easy, and best of all, reusable year after year. They reduce the amount of post-holiday

Comments

[baphnedia]

Like any good hoard potato caught in this conundrum (I do have the right dragon, right?), I will state for the record that doing a mix is usually best. Oh, and arming the gift bags with alarm systems (that will be reusable).

Doing a mix will do two things; it will reduce after-Christmas waste, and if the would-be tamperers look only for their own gifts to peek at or tamper with, then they get boxed presents. Those who you can trust to not look at their presents can get gift bags.

For wrapping ideas, you can still tie the gift bags closed (in some form or fashion) with decorative ties, tied in a neat, and hard to reproduce bow. This might crumple the top of the bag, or it might not. For my personal preference, I'm considering using over-sized 'dice' bags, of festive colors, tied shut with both their drawstrings and ribbon. Oh, and the family will only THINK that they're getting dice. Muahahahahaha.

[tombfyre]

I don't do a damn thing for X-mas, but I have the present conundrum upon b-days and the like. I for one go for properly wrapped gifts, only to reduce the peeking into gift bags. ^^ Plus just stuffing things into a gift bag rings too much of being lazy in my books. :3 Everyone I know likes having some effort put into the things they receive.

[cpxbrex]

*shifty eyes* Not getting gifts at all would be even more environmentally friendly. Reject the capitalist consumerist tyranny of Christmas!

[athelind]

That, alas, takes the cooperation of the whole family. Otherwise, you're not the "environmentally conscious anti-consumer", you're "the jerk who didn't get anything for anyone else."

Before I was married, my family went Present-Free for about a decade. It makes for a very relaxing holiday.

Personally, I tend to use the holiday season as an excuse to get people stuff that I'd get for them anyway.

[cpxbrex]

I'm actually pretty familiar with that one, yeah. It can be awkward when people get me things and I say that I don't celebrate Christmas and rant at them for ten minutes. But you know me. I do love a good rant. ;)

[richardf8]

Newspaper.

The moment you wrap a gift in it, it has been re-used once already, and it offers the tamper-proof seal. Bonus points if you can establish a common theme between the content of the wrapping and the contents of the package.

[cpxbrex]

My wife recently gave a present to a friend who's a post-modernist wrapped in scanned pages (on scrape paper) of Lyotard's The Post-modern Condition. Amusement was had by all.

My gift was post-modern. I rejected the narrative of gift-giving and took him out for karaoke. Or however it's spelled. :)

[sternbunny]

This is what my mom would do before she switched to bags. I preferred the comic pages around my gifts, as I could read the funny papers once the gifts were opened.

Beth

[athelind]

Since I don't normally read a newspaper, I'd just be buying it for wrapping, so that wouldn't really count as "re-use"...

[araquan]

I tend to re-use boxes I've received stuff in, including postal boxes, and re-use newspaper for both the packing material and wrapping paper. It's a little tacky looking, I guess, but it does offer the best of both worlds- wrapped, boxed stuff with all materials having been reused at least once.

The paper is generally then recycled afterward, if I'm around when stuff is opened.