As I got out all of our Christmas decorations this year, I found a stack of Christmas cards that for some reason my pack rat self has saved for the last 10 years.  Since I’ve saved them this long, I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.  Instead we got creative and put them to use in other ways.

Here are some of the top ways you can put old greeting and Christmas cards to use:

If you want to save them:

• Get rings from the local office supply store or craft store or use ribbon to bind your cards into a book.  Hole punch each card in two places, we did our holes exactly 2.5 inches apart. Now you have turned them into their own little scrapbook.  I did this for the baby cards that were sent for each girl when they were born and some of the sweet cards we got when my husband and I were married.  You don’t have to save all of them, but now the special ones are all together and easy to flip through.
• You can also go the low clutter method and scan the cards into the computer.  Put all the scanned images into a file together so you can find them in the future.

If you don’t want to save them:

• Turn them into postcards or recipe cards.  As long as the inside cover of the card is still blank, you can cut the front of the card off and give it a new life!
• Turn them into place-mats.  This can also be a great way to help your kids learn to pray for others, each night have them pray for someone on their place-mat that night.  Here are detailed instructions to get started.

• Cut out images to make gift tags for future presents.
• Use the card fronts as pretty scrapbook embellishments, or make bookmarks from them.

Donate them:

Yep, you can give your cards a new life and help out others.  Tons of groups around the country use greeting cards in craft projects.  One place is the St. Jude’s Ranch for Children.  They re-purpose cards into new cards as a fundraiser!

Do you have something you love to do with cards rather than throwing them away??