Greetings

We, like a lot of you, received a slew of Christmas cards in the mail from family and friends last month. We display them during the holiday but as soon as the tree got taken down and the decorations got packed away, the cards got the boot too. For the longest time I had been putting them in a photo album, but after just a couple of birthdays and Christmas I already have an entire album filled to the brim with cards. So unless I wanted my bookcase to be stuffed with photo albums full of greeting cards I needed to do something.

In comes the hole punch, I simply punched two holes in each card and used binder rings to hold them all together (like a book). 

My inspiration to do this came from a picture I saw on Pinterest a few weeks ago (sorry, I didn’t think to keep the source because I popped up off the couch and did this little ol’ project the second I saw the pin). The pin I saw was of cards held together with ribbon, but I thought using binder rings would make it more secure and easier to flip through. And not only did I gain some space on my bookcase but now we can enjoy the cards and actually open and read them. When they were in the photo album it was a pain to take each card out of the plastic, read it, and slip it back in the plastic - after doing that with three or four cards your motivation to continue reading the rest of the cards quickly dissipates.

So there you have it, an easy way to keep and enjoy greeting cards without sacrificing your entire bookcase to the cause.

And did you know that you can donate the front of your used greeting cards to St Jude's Ranch for Children? They recycle them to make new cards and it also helps them raise money. I found this out after punching holes in my cards, but at the end of the year I plan to donate a lot of the new cards we receive throughout this year, and then just continue my hole-punching shenanigans for the cards that I find are super sentimental and simply can't part with.

You can find more details on donating your used greeting cards at http://www.stjudesranch.org/shop/recycled-card-program/

Xo,

Lor