What can you do today?

I randomly made the mistake of driving through our neighborhood on the trash day after X-mas., typically I take the back way. Seriously, it made me want to cry. For many reasons; the amount of garbage from the new stuff, the amount of old stuff that was being thrown out,  the belief that if you just buy your kids one more toy that might be "the one" and they might start to like you, the idea that "stuff" will make you happy. Okay, okay, I will quit. 

My favorite tip for this time of year is to re-use that wrapping paper. We didn't do the whole gift thing this year, but inevitably the grandparents and such did. I could never just throw wrapping paper away. I have had a very scary private stash of used wrapping paper under my bed. Yes, scary.....I have been saving it for quite some time. I didn't know why. I can't explain it, but there it was.

Then it occurred to me how I might re-use it. And out came the shredder. This is quite possibly my favorite recycling program yet. I fed all that paper to my shredder and am using it to pack boxes, do art projects and who-knows what else. It is cute and a much better way of using it than just stashing it for that moment when I decide that wrapping a gift in used paper is acceptable. Although, I am sure that day will come too.