7 Holiday Upcycling Ideas For Your Home
What is Upcycling?
First of all, what is upcycling? By now, most people are aware of recycling, but upcycling is a more recent term that means re-using your stuff in creative ways. Recycling uses a lot of energy and not everything can be recycled. Hence the advice to “reduce, reuse, recycle.” Upcycling is the part of the equation that involves reducing your waste and re-using old stuff. According to Stanford University , Americans use 25% more stuff during the holidays, creating an extra 25 million tons of garbage, so upcycling your holiday decor can have a big positive impact on the environment.
How Do I Make My Home Holiday Appropriate With Upcycling?
If you want your home to look beautiful during the holiday season, these 6 ideas for upcycling materials can create a homely and elegant holiday atmosphere without causing excess waste and damaging the environment:
- Use perishable food items as holiday
decoration instead of buying new holiday decorations made from materials like plastic, glass and paper. Dried citrus fruits, dried chillis, gingerbread and iced cookies all make beautiful and natural decorations you can use in holiday garlands or string together using twine. - Instead of buying new gift tags, holiday cards, or gift-wrapping paper, use quick collaging and craft techniques to cut out old holiday greetings or images from Greeting Cards to create holiday gift tags you can attach to gifts with ribbon or twine. You can also create new holiday cards by collaging old store bought designs onto card. You don’t have to buy wrapping paper either, you can use any recycled material, from junkmail, to old paper bags, to last year’s gift-wrapping paper to wrap gifts.
- Skip buying a tree, or use natural materials or objects in your home to create a tree-alternative. If you are buying a tree, make sure to check that the tree is part of a sustainable initiative that re-plants several trees for everyone cut. If you want to skip the holiday tree altogether you can also create a minimalist, beautiful tree out of driftwood or even old furniture parts. If a tree is not part of your holiday tradition, you can make small table-top arrangements to hang decorations from attractive bare branches, or twisted wire decorated with ornaments and LED lights.
- Bring greenery from your garden indoors and decorate your house plants with holiday ornaments. Even if you don’t have a tree, greenery trimmings, berries and ornaments adorning your favorite house-plants will create a holiday atmosphere.
- Don’t buy new holiday candles or candle holders, instead utilize old glass bottles and containers as candle holders and buy a candle-making set to melt down old candle stubs. Old candles can easily be melted down to create beautiful and unusual holiday candles.
Turn old clothes into holiday ornaments and gift bags. Some old clothes, like old t-shirts and socks, will not be re-sold and will likely end up as landfill or be exported to developing countries. To avoid participating in the waste of old clothing, you can use old clothes to create fluffy holiday baubles and drawstring gift bags.- Give the gift of a memory quilt. If you have old fabrics and clothes with a lot of memories attached to them, like baby blankets, old t-shirts or old sports clothes, some businesses will turn your old fabrics into memory quilts that can showcase sporting memories or become slipcovers or bed clothes that can be used around the home.
The beauty of upcycling is that there really is no limit to the potential to re-use materials you already have lying around the home. It’s also a wonderful way to engage your kids in creative activities at the holidays. If you are struggling to figure out how to create less waste this holiday season, our green interior design and conscious interior design consultants can help you kickstart your creativity for the holiday season and beyond. We are sustainable living consultants and design consultants who can help you explore the science and design of sustainable living in all aspects of your life. You can visit our green interior design offices in La Jolla or consult with us remotely on projects big and small. Please contact us to learn more about our conscious design services.
