Have you ever ironed paper?

Once again, I’ve been busy sorting through ‘stuff’ in order to de-clutter or re-use items.

A few years ago, I assisted my mother de-clutter her home. Of course, being a hoarder, a collector, or any other synonym you wish to use, means you’d understand if I said it was a huge task. We had many laughs and a few tears in the process of ‘letting go’ of her precious collection of every other sort of re-usable –

• paper
• cardboard
• old letters
• envelopes
• paper bags
• plastic bags
• packaging wrap

Being a ‘skinflint’

Perhaps my mother was an environmentalist in her own way, as she happily reused bags and wrappers, over and over. This led to an embarrassing situation for me.

In the 1970s, I remember being called a ‘skinflint’ when I washed, hung out and dried, plastic bags. This was in keeping with what I’d witnessed my mother doing as, like her, I saw no purpose in discarding a re-usable item.

I was shamed by my peer’s remark about my row of neatly pegged bags on my verandah line, ready to be reused for work lunches. I began to be less scrupulous and discarded the sandwich bags and other pieces of plastic until, after many years, I realised I had become what I considered, rather wasteful. A growing sense of guilt arose if I did not use that plastic bag or wrapper more than once. Even so, soiled items were discarded, not washed and reused.

It is quite different now with environmental concerns. I avoid plastic as much as possible.Images found on a google search are enough to encourage alternatives to using plastic.

Pieces of paper and cardboard boxes

Over the years I’ve followed in my mother’s footsteps and collected scrap paper for all sorts of purposes:

1. Envelopes, backs of fliers, scraps of paper and thin card of any shape or size are all re-usable for a note, a shopping list, a household memo to self or someone else, or any such purpose.
2. Stamps are cut or torn from the corners of envelopes – preferably with the full postmark – and given to the CWA (Country Women’s Association) as a fundraiser.
3. Boxes of all shapes and sizes are kept. I honestly cannot believe the range and sizes stashed for ‘future use’. For sometime, with storage an issue, I seldom kept boxes, except for craft projects. ‘Getting crafty’ is one way to use up the stockpile. More recently boxes of all shapes and sizes have serve as storage for memorabilia.

Have you ever ironed paper?

Oh please, we’d inwardly sigh nearly every Christmas and birthday as we obliged our mother by carefully lifting sticky tape and not tearing the paper so it was re-useable!

Perhaps you can imagine my mother’s horror when her grandchildren ripped open gifts, impatient for what was inside. Imagine her laughter too, when she noted joy in the eyes of the recipients of a gift they would have much fun with. The discarded paper was rifled through, cut into smaller pieces and used again. We’d use it to cover school books, or to make scrapbooks.

I remember learning how to iron paper, so the creases were less apparent! However, as the years marched on, tears in cheap wrapping paper gift paper made it challenging to remove tape without damaging it. So of course, we didn’t bother. (Now, tears appear as you bundle the gift into it!)

Quality paper is a delight to use, though, and I adore wrapping paper that is patterned on both sides. However, re-used gift wrap was our norm. Every crumple and crinkle added character to our gifts, especially the ones we couldn’t iron out!

Cards – birthday and Christmas

Cards were used and reused in several ways. After noting who a card was from, and with the Christmas List updated, the fun part of cutting swirly shapes began.

First, we cut around the printed message inside the card, (so long as the writer’s message left sufficient space), and carefully cut a shape around the image on the front of the card. We now had two gift tags from each card, ready for next year’s gifts. Today we have crafty scissors with creative cutting edges that give the tags extra character.

How did we use these?

Apart from covering boxes, we added them to the front of an exercise book which was covered in brown paper. Once covered, the cards added, the student’s name, subject and grade (school year) were written onto the front. We would then cover the whole book with plastic or contact. What a mini craft in itself, long gone now! Somewhere, I still have my very first dressmaking book covered in this fashion.

Is it de-cluttering or reusing, recycling, reducing?

In this day and age where the mantra re-use, recycle, reduce is almost falling on deaf ears, I guess I am proud of my mother’s spendthrift ways. She was both ahead of her time and a product of her time. Born in the 1930’s, she grew up through the depression years in Australia and knew what it meant to have to save every last piece of almost anything, to get by. In her time she was right on target.

A Blank Page?

As for paper re-use, today, I have a drawer full for grandchildren to draw on and to practice their cutting out skills, as well for writing our own lists and notes. In my mother’s footsteps I collate my collection from a lesser range than that listed above. However, there’s still the occasional item via snail mail; or packaging that is re-usable.

An empty box?

Gift wrapping paper and cards are perfect for covering cardboard boxes in bright decorative colours. I file my inherited stash of birthday and Christmas cards in shoe boxes covered with the fronts of old cards, giving each box my own unique touch.

Decluttering or recycling?

It is a bit of both. The process of de-cluttering requires using some of those stored bags and boxes. Labels are printed on card and paper. Actually re-using the items is a slower, less immediate way of de-cluttering, yet it is in-keeping with an ethic that has its place today.

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