Pickles by Brian Crane for December 15, 2019

what an odd habit Opal has there

My family makes fun of me for saving wrapping paper. That’s because they don’t wrap things any more: Most of the presents come in fancy bags or boxes. Which, I admit, are easier to re-use.

I have heard of people saving wrapping paper my mother always did. I have never heard of people ironing it though.

I think this puts Opal one up on Jack Benny for cheapness.

Earl needs to make a trip downtown and get Opal some new wrapping paper pronto !

Earl are you winning ?

good thing they mentioned it was wrapping paper, for a second it looked like Opal was ironing someone’s Hawaiian shirt!

Kind of defeats the purpose of reusing it.

We were pretty cash poor when I was a child. I remember one Christmas where my two brothers and I shared all the gifts under the tree and they were wrapped in Sunday comic pages from the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper. My parents were cash poor all right, but they would go to great lengths to ensure widely varied reading material in our home. Thanks, folks. I love you.

I save the coloured Sunday comics from December, when they are full of Christmas stories – great wrapping paper.

My daughter wraps with brown paper, or the funnies and saves EVERY bit of tissue paper she can get. Also she has a huge gift bag collection. Just a very frugal person. I will admit to saving a few really nice gift boxes and in some cases I have received the same box 2 or 3 times. It just passes on from one to another and eventually back to me.

Opal is not being frugal as much as she is NOT adding useless trash to our landfills. Thanks Opal!

My in-laws save every bit of wrapping paper, opening presents carefully – NO TEARING!! The first couple of Christmases with them was agony (but I love them) because where I grew up, the kid who made the biggest messy pile of torn wrapping paper won the day.

In our house it is the smoke detector blaring!

My mother made us open our gifts very carefully and saved wrapping paper. She also ironed it. Old habits die hard. I do save wrapping paper….but at least I don’t IRON it. And my daughter saves it too. (I won’t begin to tell you about cutting paper napkins in HALF, re-using aluminum foil and bringing home the paper bags from school lunches). Ah, generations of Depression-Era parents still cling to these habits!

I save bows and trinkets but not the paper……

Just sent a boatload of that kind of stuff to a good friend who has grandkids. They use it for arts and crafts and other fun stuff. (Used to be like Opal, but, dang, some of that stuff is just SO pretty. . .)

My gram did. I chalked it to living through the depression of the 30’s. I don’t think this last series of gens could cope with not being wasteful.I kinda liked what she called depression loaf, which was Spam, mustard and cloves, baked.

gift bags

My (late) Mom in law wrapped presents with the Sunday funnies. That was back in the day and she lived miles from town – no quick popping down to Walgreens if she ran out of proper wrapping paper. And guess what – nobody complained.

Paper will burn at 451 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s pretty hot for an iron.

Yes, I too have wandered and wondered at this. Being told to carefully open, then watch the paper be lovingly and expertly folded. Later it was only the bows. I remember too the paper stinking and thought it’s toxic. And if they used it to clean the poor critters covered with Exxon Valdez oil they would have immediately died and suffered less.

I always save it and ironing tissue paper works great!

We had tinsel on the tree when I was a kid, and each year we removed it all to save for the next year. Very labor intensive!

Should’a use a steam iron!

My Mom put the tinsel back in the box too. I save the bows and re-use them. Small leftover pieces of paper I use for wrapping stocking stuffers. I also buy paper, bows, cards, bags, etc. after Christmas when it is half price.