How I'm Wrapping My Gifts This Year

Every year for the last few years I go through the struggle of wanting to enjoy my favorite seasonal rituals while still upholding my ethical and environmental values. This year I've been trying to make sure I shop small, buy used, and generally try to make choices that support my community as I enjoy the holidays. One thing that seemed easy enough to figure out was wrapping materials.
Did you know a lot of wrapping materials is not made of recyclable paper? Avoiding any wrapping you see with glitter, foil, or any other speciality treatment is a great place to start. Often times, small shops or art stores will have paper options can be composted and recycled, but they can be quite expensive especially if you have a lot of gifts to wrap. Which leads me to question of if putting so much time, effort, and money into the part of the gift that gets torn and discarded is really even worth it all? This year, I decided that it was not worth it and I was going to find other means to wrap my gifts. 
Like many of you, I have the infamous bag of gift bags saved from year to year. The collection is constantly being regifted or have new bags added to the collection. But what other options are there? Gift bags don't work for every gift and can't be shipped very well. Below are some real life example of gifts I wrapped and gave this year. I spent $0.00 on gift wrap and only used existing materials I already had or was able to get for free. 

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