Reusable gift wrap: pillowcases!

This present-wrapping hack saves time AND trees! From Virginia in Ireland:

I've been feeling a little PST (Pre-Santa Syndrome) this week -- too much to do and too little time.  Suddenly I had a short window for gift wrapping but no supplies!  What to do?  PILLOW CASES! We all know about gift bags, but what if they're not big enough, or you don't have any?  I was able to wrap nearly all the family's medium-size gifts in under 30 minutes total.

I also filled two cases with a few small gifts to each child from Granny instead of wrapping each one.  Just pop in the gift and tie with anything handy.  I used ribbon for some, a bandana for one and even scarves. 

Bonus!  By using pillow-cases from each person's bed-set, no labelling was required -- everyone will know which is their own gift.

Double-bonus! need to peek inside? untie and retie the bow.  (Careful, unless you tie it in knots, little eyes may peek too)  Wrapping all wrapped-up!  Feeling much more cheerful now :-)

Related: Sew simple gift bags out of sale fabric, and lose the wrapping paper for good

Comments

[Shauna]

I like this idea! You could even get a new pillowcase with a favorite character, color, whatever and use it to wrap a child's gift, and the pillowcase would be part of the gift.

[holly]

I know it's not eco-friendly and all, but ripping off the wrapping paper? It's fun.

[monster]

This sounds good if you lay in a supply of new pillow cases ahead of time; not sure how I feel about using old ones that have already been in use. If you sew, you could make Christmas-fabric cases and then next year they could appear on the beds...

[adrienne]

We used this for our kids' birthdays as well as Christmas this year. With my two preschoolers, I actually loaded up the cases with multiple items. It takes our two-year-old some time just to pull everything out, so the pace of opening doesn't change much (but her frustration level drops notably).

With our newborn's feeding schedule there were barely enough hours in the day to get presents much less wrap them. Long live the pillowcase wrapper!