191 | What to Do with Wrapping Paper & Gift Giving Supplies

Gift bags boxes wrapping paper ribbons cards the little gift tag thingies streamers all this stuff that goes into wrapping a present are you holding on to too much or are you even using what you have where do you have this kind of thing stored and can you even find what you’re looking for when you need to wrap a gift quickly

 It’s Tuesday. And you know what that means. I’m answering a listener question. I want to remind you that I can answer the questions that you have. And even if you don’t have a particular question, but you have something that you find a particular part of your day to be overwhelming, or you don’t know what to do because you have a time of day that is super stressful or something in your house that really bothers you.

And you don’t know the specific question you can just tell me this is happening. And I don’t know what to do about it, or this is the situation. Do you have any suggestions for me? Because I bet I have something. A little tip or a little hack that can help you. You can probably make a change or it can point you in the right direction or send you a resource that will be helpful for you to. Put it in or so different. Get lean, reduce that struggle. So if you have a question, go to intentional, edit.com and then a little record. Now button pops up, you just click on that record now button and it asks you for your name and then you leave a message. You just say the question, you don’t have to type anything out.

You don’t have to [00:02:00] send an email or go to that trouble. You simply record the message by clicking on that record. Now button on intentional edit.com. Let me know, what are you struggling with? What problems have come up in your home or the lack of organization, or you need a little bit of a change to a routine or some motivation for decluttering. Any of the topics that we talk about here, if they are aligned. Ask me your question. Send me your struggle. Unintentional, edit.com by clicking on that record now button. And I will answer your question on a future tip Tuesday episode. The question that I am answering today is focused on gift giving. And here it is. Do I really need to keep all the gift bags from gifts we receive. I have them all over the house and never able to find one when I need it. It’s not like myself to be wasteful, but how many is reasonable to keep and where do I give the ones we don’t use? Great question. My personal preference is to have some gift wrap on hand to use when it is time to wrap a present. If you have gift bags, wrapping paper, ribbons, little gift tags, that whatever that critical paper is to do a gift basket boxes, all of these things, and you have them in your house. They’re taking up space, but you are not using them. You don’t use it. If you have the opportunity to wrap a gift and you’re not using the things that you’re have, but you’re going out and you’re purchasing more. I want to pose a question. Why are you keeping the supplies? If you’re not going to use them. And your track record is not using them 99% of the time. Why do you feel the need to keep that? I think about that for a second. When you use them. That’s great. they’re serving a purpose by being in your home. It is a supply, just like you have food in your pantry. [00:04:00] You, you use it when you need it. luckily gift drive doesn’t expire or go bad or go stale. You can use these things for a long time, but if you aren’t going to use the bags, the ribbons, the wrapping paper, the boxes, anything associated with gift wrap. Why are you keeping it?

What I really liked about this question is it says I have them all over the house and I’m never able to find one when I need it. So the intention is there to use these gift bags, but when they’re not organized and kept in a place where they’re all together and you know where to go, then you might not be able to find what you’re looking for, or you’re trying to wrap a child’s birthday gift.

And the only thing you can find is a gift bag that says happy. Father’s. Others day that’s going to happen when there is a lack of organization. But when we gather all these things and we keep them together, then you can go to this one specific location, see what you have and use what you have. So if it’s the lack of organization that is preventing you from using them, then let’s go through them. Get rid of the ones that you will never use or are really beat up or a gift bag where the little handle is broken. So you can’t use it. Toss the trash. Get rid of the things that you’re not going to use narrow down your inventory. And keep what you’re actually going to use. If the intention is to use the supplies you have, then the first step is to gather everything. So all the types of gift drop, bring them to one central location and go through all of the things that you have gathered. Then you toss anything that you will not be using. Whether it’s because it’s broken or it’s old, or you don’t like what it says on it or anything, get rid of those things. You can donate wrapping supplies if they’re in basically perfect condition to most. Donation [00:06:00] places and they will package them as a group and then sell them off. But for the most part, you’re probably getting rid of things that are broken or really in a bad shape. And wouldn’t be used in the future. Then store the remaining items so that they’re easy to get to the point is that you will want to use these and you will go to this same location when it is time to wrap a gift. Now, I like to store all of my gift frappe in one place, and that’s everything that fits in a cabinet. Mine happens to be in my laundry room because I have that space available.

Yours might be in a linen closet or a basement or a storage closet under the stairs someplace. Or in a guestroom closet, it doesn’t matter. The actual location doesn’t matter. It’s weird. Do you have the space available to you for something that is not going to be used on a daily basis? So it doesn’t have to be front and center in terms of the storage location, but it’s going to be used frequently enough that it makes sense for you to occupy this space with this amount of stuff.

So you will store it where it makes sense in your home, where that space is available, and that exact space is going to be up to you. And the amount of space you need is going to be determined. bye. How much you find that you need to keep. If you’re not going through this pretty quickly, it doesn’t make sense to store 75 gift bags. If you’re only using two or three of these each year, Narrow it down based on how many gifts you are rapping. And a few extras are fine because you don’t know the size of the gift that you might Give, a little variety so that when you bring those gifts home, when you’re wrapping the present, then you can actually grab the right size gift bag. The only thing I don’t have in my laundry room is the gift wrap. I have it in a closet that is right next to the laundry room because those are tall and skinny and they don’t fit in the cabinet. So I do have a container for [00:08:00] those. If I see a, a sale on wrapping paper that I know that I will use when I know my stock is running low. I also like to do gift baskets or gift boxes. So that little crinkly paper I’ll sometimes stock up on that. And I have a container of that in the cabinet with my wrapping supplies. There is tape. And scissors I also have a container for gift cards that is close by to that because I seem to need a card a lot more than I actually need to wrap a gift. But all of this is in the same general location where within a few steps, I can get all of these things. And completely wrap a present. So that makes it incredibly efficient. And I have these supplied and clear storage containers. So that I can see what I have and easily go through them. I also know what is running low. I use tissue paper I can see when that tissue paper is running low and then grab it when I’m at the store, I don’t have to make a special trip just to get that, just to wrap the one gift. I do keep those things stocked. Now, if you want a lot of details on how I have organized and gone through all of the gift dropping supplies at my house, listen to episode 113, that was an episode last year from the home organizing challenge of 2022 it’s episode one 13. And there’s a ton of details in there. And another place you can look is.

The story highlights on my Instagram and it says, H oh C 22, you can kind of tap through some of those. And eventually you will get to the one where it talks about gift drop and wrapping paper and all of those supplies. And then on there, you can actually see, I share what it looks like and the products that I use to organize those.

So you can see that and get the visual of that over there. So check out the story, highlights on my Instagram. That’s insane. Intentional edit is the account. And the highlight is H O C 22. [00:10:00]And then the episode you’ll want to listen to for more details is episode one 13. That was from the home organizing challenge last year in 2022. And you could get more details over there. Thank you for listening again if you want me to help with your struggles put it into some of those frustrations and answer your questions on a future tip tuesday episode go to intentional edit.com. click on that record now button and i will answer the question that you submit on a future episode