Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Why I hate gift bags

I hate gift bags.

When we got married I accumulated a mountain of gift bags between bridal showers and wedding gifts. Over the years I reused them, shared them with family going to weddings and finally threw most of the rest away when we moved last year. No one needs a lifetime supply of wedding themed gift bags.


Now I have enough baby themed gift bags to wallpaper the nursery (good idea! what was I thinking!?)


Don't get me wrong. My dislike of gift bags is not actually related to my collection of them. It is actually because I love wrapping gifts. My mom used to let me wrap the gifts for the entire family. She hates wrapping. I love it. I love picking paper and coordinating with ribbon or bows. I take great care to wrap them neatly and nicely. I think it is way more fun to open a gift that is wrapped in a box than one in a bag. I ordered most of our Christmas gifts online this year and I am so anxious waiting for them to get here so I can start wrapping!


I wish I weren't so practical and could just throw away all the gifts bag we receive. But I just can't bring myself to waste them. The biggest problem with gift bags is that they tend to be so event specific. I can only reuse Christmas bags at Christmas... so that is 11 months of storage. And I certainly don't know enough people having babies to reuse all the bags I received this year in my whole lifetime. If they were all in solid colors or not so specific, at least we could use them whenever we wanted!


Even though I have years worth of gift bags sitting in my closet for every occasion, chances are if you are getting a gift from me it will be wrapped. In a box. If I can find one. Because one of the side effects of America's obsession with gift bags is that is nearly impossible to buy gift boxes any time of year besides Christmas. I found them at Target this week and stocked up for the year.


In the meantime, if you want to save a few bucks on a gift bag, feel free to come take some off of my hands!

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