I admit it…I’ve already begun my holiday decorating. This year, I went straight from Halloween to Christmas…we’ll be out of town over Thanksgiving, so I figured that was a good excuse to leave those decorations boxed for another year.

I was recently asked about green and eco-friendly decorating tips. I thought I’d share some of the information I’ve found here.

To begin with….ALWAYS try to

Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle.

~ Reduce your urge to buy new items and add trash and packaging to the landfills by looking through decorations you already have and re-using them instead of buying new. This is essentially what I do. I re-use decorations year-in-year-out but, I rearrange them differently every year, even putting them in different rooms to add some diversity.

~ If there are items you want to buy, try to choose ones that come with little or no packaging such as free-hanging ornaments.

~ Choose handmade products from natural materials if possible. Make your own scented ornaments by poking full cloves into oranges and hanging them from a string or ribbon. Also, try decorating with natural items like greenery from a tree in your yard. Herbs from your garden like rosemary, thyme and sage added with pinecones and greenery can give your house a festive scent. Supplement these scents with essential oils.

~ Be creative! There are tons of ideas online showing how to reuse last year’s holiday items to create decorations you can use for this year. For example, you can use cropped and trimmed pieces from old greeting cards as gift tags or place cards. You can also tape the fronts of cards to a piece of string to hang as a holiday banner. Tape the card images to plain colored bags to create gift bags. Re-use last year’s ribbons and bows by adding a piece of double-sided tape or glue to them.

~ Have a decoration trading party with friends. You never know if something you’d like to get rid of is the perfect complement to what someone else already has.

~ Shop in secondhand shops like Goodwill and Salvation Army. Also, try thrift stores, yard sales and online at sites like Freecycle, Craigslist, and eBay. It’s just amazing what you can find at little or no cost.

~ Consider decorating a live tree that you can plant later in your yard after the holiday season.

~ Decorate with items you can enjoy eating over the holidays like bowls of nuts, fruits, colorful squash, and pomegranates.

Know of any other great eco-friendly decorating tips? Please share them with me and I’ll help pass them along.

Have a Great GREEN Day!
~ Lita