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DIY Gift Bags-Frugal and Reusable!

Abby H.

Every year I look for a new way to save money. And over the past few years, it’s been harder and harder to come up with new ways to save money. And I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but now I’ve got some free time, and Dollar Tree has some really cute fat quarters of fabric (that’s an 18×21 or 22-inch piece of typically cotton fabric). Over the winter holidays, I was watching TikTok and one of my faves creators, Domestic Blisters, had posted that instead of going the route of buying boxes and wrapping paper or paper gift bags, she was going to create a set of cloth reusable gift bags for her families gifts.

I love this idea, and honestly, I don’t know why I had never thought of it before. We are huge re-users of gift bags to the point where they’re mostly tape. And, a lot of our out-of-state/out-of-area relatives send us gifts from Amazon that come in reusable cloth Amazon bags.

We reuse those bags until they fall apart. And in the past, we have had 10 to 20, although in recent years we had started to cycle out ones that were falling apart or just weren’t in great shape.

So on a cold and rainy afternoon, I pulled my box of fabric out of the closet and set to go through it. I have recently acquired a pretty good selection of quilting fat quarters and smaller (left the yard) pieces of various weights of cotton. I squared off all the pieces so there were no round edges or strange shapes, and set to making some gift bags. We will primarily use these for Christmas, but, I wanted them to be used all year so I did not specifically make them Christmas or winter-holiday-themed. And because I used what fabrics I had on hand, they are lots of different colors and prints.

If you have basic sewing skills and can sew a square or rectangle, this is an easy project for you.

Items needed:

  • Fabric: If you are using fat quarters, you will need two pieces- one for the front and one for the back. I used a lot of 1/2 yard pieces- and I folded those in half. Cotton or cotton blend works best.
  • Pins: To pin together your project.
  • Safety Pin: To guide your string/ribbon/yarn through the casing.
  • String/Ribbon/Yarn: about 2 feet-ish (24-ish inches) per bag. You want enough where you can open the bag all the way and have enough to come out of the opening.

You’re basically just making a pillowcase, and on the top of the bag (or on the side of the pillowcase where you would leave it open to put the pillow in), you fold over the raw edge and make a tiny casing.

I fold my raw edge over twice to make sure the inside is nice looking. I frequently use my decorative stitches on the casing to make it a little extra festive.

Make sure to leave a little gap so that you can put ribbon or yarn all the way through to make a drawstring pouch.

We’ve already used some of these bags for my birthday, and my son’s birthday.

1 gift bag can cost upwards of $5, and if it isn’t opened carefully, it can be torn and then trashed. These bags cost about $2 to make (or less if you shop sales for fabric or reuse clothes that are stained or otherwise cannot be handed down. Make sure to cut around stains!) and can be reused for years. Spools of Ribbon can be picked up for less than $2/roll at Michaels, and they frequently have coupons!

So there you have it. In a few hours, you can have your own stack of reusable gift bags!

Gazelle Rewards: Earn More For Your Old Phone!

Abby H.

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**This post contains affiliate links and I may be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. 

Ok, so maybe not a phone that’s as old as the one above… but…

Gazelle has recently launched the Gazelle Rewards program so that customers can get even more money for trade-in devices! I’m pretty excited about it because I need a new phone like whoah. My phone is 3 years old, and it’s starting to not hold a charge for long along with a few other things. But, I’ve kept it in an Otter Box, so it’s in really excellent shape.

How it works:
Step 1. Sign up for Gazelle Rewards by creating an account and opting into the loyalty program. If you have an existing Gazelle account, log in and opt into the loyalty program through the Rewards Dashboard.
Step 2. Sell your devices to rake in points.
Step 3. Redeem your points to add $5, $10, $20, $50 or $100 to your next trade-in payout from Gazelle!

Right now Gazelle has a couple awesome promotions: 10% Bonus on iPhones $150+ at Gazelle (10/22-10/28) But if you aren’t in the market for a phone, There is a pretty sweet deal on MacBooks: $10 Off Sitewide, Up To $100 Off Some MacBooks at Gazelle (10/23-10/29)

I’ve sold two of our old phones to Gazelle. I like that our old technology isn’t relegated to a junk drawer or ending up in a landfill.

New Year’s Resolution #10: Reduce, Reuse, recycle

Abby H.3 Comments

So this is the last one! I’ve been meaning to post this for a week or so, but I hurt my wrist (I fell while hiking!), so I’ve been off the computer a lot.

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#10 is a big one for our family! Reduce, re-use, recycle!

Reduce:

  • Buy less stuff. That one is pretty simple.
  • Use what you have on hand.  There are some pretty awesome websites like Recipe Key and Recipe Matcher that help you find recipes based on what you have in your pantry.
  • Reduce your waste out put.  I’m not asking you to hold it when you gotta go, but put your eggshells and coffee grounds in your house plants and tomato plants.  Try composting.  You’ll be  reducing your carbon foot print and you’ll make your plants happier!

Re-use:

  • Re-purpose items!  This includes eating your leftovers.
  • Here, here, and here are some great Pinterest boards that have re-using ideas.
  • I love this one: Making re-usable shopping bags out of old t-shirts (they make a great gift too).
  • Mend your clothes- including fallen hems, loose buttons and minor tears.  Sewing kits are inexpensive.  If you don’t know how to sew or even thread a needle, check out YouTube for some tutorials. And hey, you’ll learn a new skills!

Recycle:

  • In some areas, recycling is done by weight (like the majority of the recycling centers we have here).  You bring all of your aluminum cans crushed up or your glass bottles in big garbage bags and they are weighed, and you receive a per lb. price.
  • In other areas (like where my in-laws live back east and very few locations here in So Cal) there are machines that you deposit bottles and cans into one at a time and a per piece bottle deposit is returned to you. Re-Planet is one of those companies.
  • Some areas mandate recycling- Where we live there are special cans: Black for trash, green for yard waste, and blue for recycling.  The items that cannot be returned for a bottle deposit like milk cartons, soup cans, cereal boxes can be placed into the blue bin.
  • Recycling doesn’t only mean bottles and cans , it can also be to give an item a new life and a new home.  Donate clothes and other household items to charity or use freecycle and help your neighbors. I especially like the Buy Nothing Movement.
  • You can also sell items on Craigslist, have a garage sale or sell your items via a consignment shop.  They will go to a new home, you will have kept the stuff from a landfill, and you’ll have a little cash!
  • Did you know that in some states you can recycle your unwanted house paint? Check out PaintCare here for more details!

How do you incorporate the three R’s into your daily life?

5 Easy Steps to Going Green!

Abby H.

5 Easy Steps to Going Green!

A few weeks ago I went to the Moms Meet Wow Summit and learned a lot of ways that any family can start their journey to going green. And it is a journey. It’s not something that you wake up one morning and think, “Today we go green!”. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Think about how much stuff you’d throw away: Cleaning supplies, food, household goods. That woud make a lot of trash all at once, and that’s definitely not the direction you’d want to go in.

Here are 5 steps to start your going green journey (all of these we’ve implemented at our house):

Reduce: In order to reduce our carbon footprint, we re-use as much as we can.  For me the first step was to reduce the number of cleaners we had in the house, since a lot of them aren’t too environmentally friendly.

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Re-using packages helps the environment!

I made up some of the Dr. Bronner’s All Purpose cleaner (¼ c. soap in a quart of water in a spray bottle. Add ¼ tsp. tea tree essential oil if desired.) using a sample of the Baby Unscented Pure-Castile Liquid Soap, and I put it into a bottle that used to hold another cleaner. I washed the bottle thoroughly before mixing up the new cleaner. It REALLY gets the kitchen clean and because it’s an all purpose cleaner, I use it in the bathroom too! I really like that Dr. Bronner’s products are biodegradable, organic and are safe enough that you can brush your teeth with (but, yes, it does taste like soap!!).

 

 

 

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Sturdy Thirty-One bag and the Banana Box!

Re-Use: I re-use as much as I can around the house. We’ve got re-usable lunch bags for Little Man (and that classy banana box too- keeps the bananas from getting beat up in transit), and one for the car (it’s replaced our car snack box). I cut up old beat up bath towels and use them to clean up around the house. I re-use containers as well. I cleaned out an empty formula canister and put Nesquik powder in it instead. I even re-used the formula scoop (since it’s smaller than the usual portion size, we use less each time!).

Recycle: We have a recycling bin with a lid on the patio and we put our recycling in it. Once it’s full we take it to our local Re-Planet Recycling center. We earn a little money and help the planet- nothing better! It’s a great teaching tool for Lil’ Man!

Walk: We are fortunate to live within walking distance of a grocery store (which is closing soon, but will re-open as a Smart and Final soon), as well as a park, and a few other places that we like to go. When it’s possible (aka not 100 degrees), I put Birdy in the Stroller, and we walk as a family to pick up whatever we need or to go have an adventure. There is a second bonus: When we are shopping, I am limited to what we can carry in the undercarriage/storage area of the stroller. It really helps me stick to my shopping list! Not only are we getting exercise, but we’re leaving our car at home and that cuts down on the pollutants that are in car exhaust.

Replace non-green stuff with a green counterpart as we can: When we finish up with a non-green product, I replace it with a green version. Like the cleaner above, once I used up the last of the Windex, I replaced it with the Bronner’s recipe for cleaner. We ran out of paper towels a few weeks back, and in it’s place, I’ve been using  lint free cloths instead. I just wash them with the other towels when I do the laundry each week. I picked up AmazonBasics Microfiber Cleaning Cloth – 24 Pack for only $14.99. A few towels added to a load of laundry doesn’t cost anything extra either.