Resolve to Use Less Stuff: Visit www.use-less-stuff.com to educate yourself and prepare for this holiday season. Scroll down to the bottom and click on the 42 Ways to Trim Your Holiday Wasteline. The originator of Use Less Stuff is Robert Lilienfeld who is from Ann Arbor.
Mrs. Claus’ Best Green Gift Idea: Shop at holiday bazaars and craft shows to find hand-crafted gifts. They come with no packaging! (Take your canvas sack to bring home your gifts) You’ll be supporting local artists, getting lots of unique gifts from one shopping trip and you’ll never have to search for a parking space at Briarwood!
Make a concerted effort to not buy wrapping paper. Think about ways to wrap gifts that don’t use wrapping paper. One year I saved up a lot of brown paper grocery bags and cut them open (and pressed them!) I finished all the gifts with a lovely plaid ribbon. They really looked nice and I felt good because I reused something that would have been thrown away. (But it was definitely not a time saver.)
Green Ideas
Shop from websites that encourage enviro-friendly gifts Just type in “green gifts” and you’ll get many choices.
Give everybody organic socks! Maggie’s Functional Organics is right over in Ypsilanti.
Tickets—anything from movie tickets to concerts, sports events. Train tickets—a gift to somewhere! Put tickets in a cd case and drop it into a size 2 gift bag.
A gym membership, a yoga class or any adult ed class from the rec department
Food! Give your friends an invitation to a homemade dinner. Make up a fancy menu of things you know they will like, put it in a cd case and wrap it in a size 2 gift bag.
Gourmet chocolate, or any other extra fine food items people might not buy for themselves.
Remember Zingermans. They have a “bread of the month” gift, among other interesting edible gifts
Go to Treasure Mart. You’ll be amazed at what you can find. And no packaging!
Really nice canvas shopping totes.
A battery charger and rechargeable batteries
Good quality water bottles and a purifier for the kitchen faucet. (Or a refrigerator water purifier.)
A set of Mrs. Claus’ gift bags!
For friends or family and especially your children—a photo album of a special time together.
For children: Books about nature and the environment. Resolve to help interest your child in environmental and nature activities.
Time with family. A written down promise to visit the Toledo Zoo or the Botanical Gardens (or someplace else you know they want to visit) over the holiday. (Put that promise in a CD case and pop that into a size 2 gift bag) When you’re there, buy them a poster of butterflies or snakes or animals or wildflowers or trees or birds or…
Send me your green gift ideas and I’ll share them in this space.
Thanks! And Happy Green Holidays!
