Do you use Christmas wrapping paper you still have from last year?

[lottieandmia]

Year after year I buy nice stuff from paper chase or wherever. I still have some left over from last year. I've never reused it before - should / do you always buy new stuff?

My lovely Granny used to wrap her gifts without using sellotape, she would just use fabric ribbon.

After unwrapping our presents we would carefully smooth and fold the paper and roll up the ribbon so we could return it to Granny for reuse on the next lot of presents.

I wouldn't dream of not using it. I find it quite a bizarre question! Why would you be so wasteful? I'm no eco warrior but if I can save resources I will, not to mention save money!

I really like the idea of furoshiki and I see that they are sold in the UK on ebay as well as other places/online.

They are literally squares of cloth. You could easily buy a few metres of christmas fabric from a cheap fabric warehouse and make your own.

That's what I'm doing atticus! You can get some really lovely fabrics quite cheap too - no need to spend £££. I need to learn how to tie them prettily now - Youtube has quite a few videos!

They're about £8 each on ebay and I'd probably pay that to avoid having to hem them - I'm useless with a sewing machine.

£8 for wrapping a single present is fairly hefty though.

I have some fabric wrappings that I use for birthday presents for direct family. But that fabric was free from scraps and old curtains/shirts etc. I then just attach ribbons to the corners because that makes it easier to wrap (or depending on the fabric, sellotape will sometimes stick).

But the point of them is that they're reusuable and can be reused many times, so if you're the type of person that pays £3 for a roll of wrapping paper or a gift bag in somewhere like WH Smith, paperchase or Clintons, they'll pay for themselves in no time. They also come in lovely designs and are all ready hemmed.

I don't generally have scraps of fabric especially of the right type and a lovely design hanging around so would need to buy fabric anyway.

I'm not saying they're a bad idea. I'm just saying that you could make 6 for the price of one of the ready hemmed ones.

I take the point though that some people can't hem a square of fabric.

I think if you can get them circulating in your family, they make a lovely thing to exchange as well. Each one should last absolutely years.

The ready-made ones often have pretty borders with a repeating print.

I would just like to point out that WHSmith are charging £4.50 for a roll of Christmas wrapping paper.

Four fucking pounds

WHSmith used to be one of those great British reliable high street brands, like M&S and Boots, until it was bought out by private equity, asset-stripped and turned into a pile-em-high-sell-em-at-extortionate-mark-ups rip-off merchant. (Boots has had the same done to it now so I imagine we can expect them to go the same way eventually.) It's a shame, I remember when Smith's had good quality stuff at decent prices and actual proper bookshops in their stores where you could buy a proper book, not just ghost-written footballers' "biographies".

WHSmith is utter shit. There are two bookshops in our town, WHS and The Works, and we only step into WHS for particular comics for the DC or christening presents. For all other books we go to the Works if we can't wait 24 hours or Amazon if we can.

What's WHS even for?

The DC have £25 WHSmith vouchers from last Christmas. Every time they want to use them we don't bother because the price is much higher than everywhere else. I'm really not sure how they stay in business.

Well our WH Smith makes a handy cut through. Other than that I have no idea.

There is a Twitter dedicated to WH Smith's crapness which amuses me. Wh smith carpet or something?

I use up whatever there is, just buy more when necessary.

When I was a kid we used to unwrap presents very carefully, keep the paper and iron it for next year! Such quaint old thrifty habits...

I always used different (cheaper!) paper for Father Christmas stocking presents, too. Too much of a giveaway for children who still believed, otherwise.

Threads like this make me so glad I stopped giving xmas presents years ago. I suppose I could decorate the oxfam envelopes with bits of ribbon.

atticusclaw2 We got some reasonably priced DVDs in our Smiths for DD. £4.99 for the Paddington film.

How about buying magazines or a subscription maybe & get them delivered?

I rarely reuse it, but give it to a friend/relative. I like buying nice new paper and having it all match

That's a good idea Ronnie

Of course! I reuse paper that was used to wrap presents last year too. If it's not really crumpled or torn, why not? Some of the paper I use has been wrapped around several presents over the course of several years!

Yep and we ran out last year so I also used birthday paper

I reuse, just not the next year. I have space to store it all and wait a couple of years then reuse it.

That was I won't wrap stuff in the same paper as Santa used last year. My youngest will notice and start asking questions!

Always reuse, saves money, time buying it and the environment. Last year I managed to get away with not buying any wrap - not even sellotape. However I've totally run out now and didn't buy any in the sales so looking out for nice new rolls for this year.

I do.

This year, I had to restock (bought 6 rolls in M&S on Tuesday!). As I only had the ends of 2 rolls and 1 full roll left from previous years.

I do a mix of papers, which are all from us. Santa doesn't wrap in this house. I even have been known, if the paper was large, in good condition and nice paper, to fold paper that was already used and reuse that, and I have a gift bag of such paper to reuse - that is often for stocking stuffer sized gifts for DSiblings (adults - there's a KK who gets 1 decent gift, and then stocking stuffers for the rest - we are currently 11 adults in that ring!).