One of my favorite ways to give gifts is to put them in gift bags. But what happens when there’s more bag than gift? You need a cheap and easy gift bag filler!Most people use bunched up tissue paper to fill the void in their gift bag. But tissue paper can be expensive, and it doesn’t always go well with the rest of your gift wrap. You can even buy “gift bag filler,” but it’s expensive too.
The solution? Make your own cheap and easy gift bag filler using shredded paper. Simply feed some clean paper through your paper shredder and you’ve got an inexpensive way to fill the bag without emptying your wallet. You can use plain white copy paper, or get creative and use plain colored paper. Send a variety of colored paper through at one time and you’ll have a rainbow of colors to fill your gift bag. The amount of paper you’ll need will depend on the size of your gift and gift bag.
Using your paper shredder is also a great way to create filler material for gift baskets and Easter baskets, too. When you’re all done with the paper gift bag filler, just recycle it.
One note: Using shredded paper as filler is a bit messy. That’s something to consider if you’re kind of a neat freak. (Or you’d like to bother someone who is a neat freak!)
Check out our other cheap tricks to help you save time and money and be sure to share your own cheap trick with us. You just might see it end up in a future Cheap Trick post!
The best part about this idea is you can do it quickly for a last minute gift!
Ha ha – your neat freak comment made me think about the time Chandler’s girlfriend gave him a gift with about 1,000,000 tiny, shiny, red confetti pieces in it. I was finding those things for weeks. But, it made me smile each time I did. Hope for the neat freak!
Hi, Like your idea, I save bulletins etc. printed on colored paper & shred it to use as packing when I send gifts to my great grandkids, multi-color makes it look more festive!
Keep up your great work, read you all the time.
That’s a good idea, Joan. I love the idea of recycling all that junk paper!
A thought I had while reading this post is to use left over scraps of wrapping paper. I always have left over scraps from the holidays and sometimes save the wrapping paper that come off gifts I’ve received. Just a thought.
Ooooh… I like this idea. I always seem to have leftover wrapping paper. I try to use some of it for gift tags or making cards, but it always seems like it ends up getting scrunched up and tossed. Shredding it for gift bag filler would be a good way to eliminate that waste!