Hasta La Ideas

December is the greeting-card season and even though a number of people are moving toward e-cards (or at least e-newsletters, full of family updates) many of us still get a number of physical cards. After they’ve been read and displayed, what do you do with them? The following are suggestions for preventing holiday cards from cluttering up your space after the holidays:

1. Toss them into the recycling bin. I do this immediately with some of the cards, particularly the ones that aren’t personal at all. I don’t need to keep a card from my dentist. And, after the holidays, even more go into my recycling bin.
2. Scan them. I scan the newsletters from people I care about. Then, I recycle the physical copy.
3. Organize them in a nice storage box or in an album. I do this with the cards I really want to save because they came from dear friends or family members and they have lovely personal notes written inside or they are photo cards where I definitely want to keep the photo. I limit the number of cards I can save to what fits into the box, because that’s all the space I want to give to this type of memorabilia.

   While the box I use isn’t acid-free and lignin-free, you might want to get one that is, especially if you’re expecting to keep the cards for a long time or perhaps pass some of them down to your children or other family members. University Products even has a special greeting card storage box. You can also find greeting card albums with polypropylene sleeves — polypropylene being one of the plastics that won’t damage your cards.

4. Put them away with the holiday decorations. I save a few cards mostly because I love the covers, and I pull them out each year to grace my refrigerator door or another surface.
5. Donate them. After a time of being overloaded and not taking cards any more, St. Jude’s Ranch is once again accepting used cards for its recycled card program — although it can’t take any from Hallmark, Disney, or American Greeting. The program takes all sorts of cards, not just holiday cards; birthday and thank you cards are especially needed.
6. Put the covers of selected cards on the inside of cabinet doors. I do this with non-holiday cards; it’s an idea I stole from one of my best friends when I saw her doing this. Now, whenever I open a cabinet door in my kitchen, I’m greeted by something that makes me smile.
7. Use them for craft projects. The web is full of ideas for this, from Martha Stewart to Pinterest boards. You can make bookmarks, gift tags, ornaments, an advent calendar, and much more. If you don’t do crafts yourself, there may be schools, senior centers, or other community organizations that would like to have these for their own craft projects. (But they may appreciate the donation more next November and December, rather than in January. Please call ahead.)

As you’re receiving holiday cards, give thought to what you’ll do with them come January so you don’t wind up with greeting card clutter.

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