Organizing Gift Wrapping Supplies
admitting you need help is the first step
Do you have a closet or drawer in your house that contains a dirty little secret? I knew it! You, too, have a jumbled, disorganized mess with your gift bags and wrapping paper! In this blog, I’m going to show you how to organize your gift-wrapping supplies, including your bags, tissue paper, ribbon, wrapping paper and bows.
When I show you how easy it is to declutter your gift bags, you’ll know exactly what you have on hand the next birthday or baby shower that comes along. How can any of us elevate our celebrations if we don’t have the ability to easily wrap gifts and make them look pretty?
some of us really do have a problem
I love this quote, by Dave Barry:
”My wife, like many women, actually likes wrapping things. If she gives you a gift which requires batteries, she wraps the batteries separately, which to me is very close to being a symptom of mental illness.”
Have you ever seen the episode of Friends where they discover that Monica, the most organized friend of the group, has a secret closet that is overflowing with junk? That was how my gift wrapping closet was looking before I organized things.
Let’s get organized
Here are 10 easy steps to organizing your gift-wrapping supplies.
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1. Go through all of your gift bags and eliminate the ones that have been reused one (or more) too many times. I think it’s great to recycle gift bags and use them over again, but you want to make sure you toss them when they start to show some wear and tear.
2. Sort your gift bags by size. This will save you money because we often go buy a bag because we don’t think we have the right size, only to find out later that the right size was hiding behind a larger one.
3. Hang your gift bags or store them neatly in a box. My favorite way to store gift bags is to take a clothes hanger that is meant for pants (see photo) and disassemble the hanger on one side. Slide all of your bags, in order of size, onto the rod and hook it back together. You can also take a magazine storage holder and arrange them neatly inside or find a shallow box or empty drawer to stack them in, in order of size.
Closet Organizer Hangers with Swing Arm Design
2 Pack White Magazine Organizers
4. Go through your colored tissue paper and throw away pieces that look like they’ve been reused. Again, recycling some tissue paper is great, but you don’t want your gift to look like you just pulled the tissue paper out of a trash can and stuck it in a gift bag. Also, tissue paper is inexpensive if you buy it at Dollar Tree or Amazon.
120 Sheets Tissue Paper (10 colors)
5. Sort your remaining tissue paper by color and fold it neatly. Your tissue paper can be kept in a drawer or shallow box.
6. Go through your wrapping paper rolls, and if there are rolls of paper that you haven’t used in years because you really don’t like it anymore, donate it! Don’t waste your space with it. Then look over the rolls of paper you are keeping and cut a nice, straight edge down the rough side of the paper and secure the paper with a hair tie or rubber band.
7. To store your wrapping paper, you can find a long storage box designed specifically for wrapping paper or stand the rolls upright in a tall basket or hamper, trash bin or box.
8. Go through your bows and throw away the smushed ones. They never look nice on the top of a gift.
9. Always store your bows loosely in a box or bag. A reusable bag from a favorite store is always a good choice.
10. Check out your rolls of ribbon and trim off any ends that are fraying and secure them with a small piece of scotch tape. You can also hang ribbon from a clothes hanger, the same way I mentioned in tip #3.
and there’s more…
Here are some additional methods for organizing and storing your gift wrapping supplies.
peg boards
You can take a peg board and use the longer hooks on it to hang gift bags or rolls of ribbon. You can even paint the peg board a pretty color so that you could hang it somewhere that it’s on full display. Imagine how pretty that could look with an assortment of gift bags and ribbon on it.
White Decorative Peg Board Kit
command strips
You could take two 3M Command Strips hooks and put them on a wall, then take a thin dowel that has been cut to the length you want and set it on top of the hooks. You could hang gift bags across the dowel.
You could take the same 3M Command Strips hooks that I mentioned above and hang gift bags on the hooks.
using boxes
If you are storing any of your supplies in boxes, wrap the outside of the box with some pretty wrapping paper, just to make it look nice, especially if you are storing it out where other people can see it.
some helpful items (and links, below)
Other items you should keep near your wrapping station:
Scotch Tape
Scissors
Gift tags and/or cards
Kraft Gift Tag Labels with strings
make it pretty
I really enjoy wrapping gifts and trying to make them look nice for the recipient. I feel like it shows the person that I want to feel special for whatever occasion it may be. At Christmas-time, I will often take a small ornament and hang it from the gift bag or tape it on the top of the box near the bow. For a birthday gift, it could be something as simple as a small bag of the person’s favorite candy that you tape to the top of the box.
start your spring cleaning early
I hope I gave you some ideas and motivation to do a little spring cleaning with your gift wrap. Also, remember to pop over to the Dollar Tree when you get a chance to stock up on some extra bags and tissue paper. It’s so much cheaper than buying it at Target or Walmart.
I tried to give you ideas for using things you have at home to organize, but I will also leave you some links for some of my favorite organizing supplies.
