What Do You Do with Your Christmas/Holiday Cards?

I do estate sales for families that need to clean out their loved one home, after the loved one has died.

I go in and make different piles. Personal items, items of value and junk.

I have never, had ANY family keep or want all of the saved Christmas cards, birthday cards.. They do not even look through them.. they just say, "toss those".

I love receiving them when they include the photos..But I do not keep them.

But now with facebook and email, ecards... getting an email with the photos, are perfect. i do not have to keep a paper copy, instead I can click and drag those photos to a file.

We hang them on the wall, at least for the holiday season and some I keep. We keep letters and we display photo cards pretty much the whole year and then put them away.

Unless there are actual photographs, I toss 'em. If there are photographs, they get tossed to the bottom of a box.

I use them for projects with the kids. The winter scenes are great for winter projects.

I make gift tags out of them.

I throw some away.

I keep the photo cards & put them in a scrapbook.

& I treasure the ones my loved ones give....especially my Gma who will be 92 in February! She addresses each one personally, sometimes adds a note, & her handwriting would put all of us to shame!

When we get Christmas cards in the mail, I put the envelopes and any letters that come in it, in a santa box I have sitting out. Then I hang the cards on the horizontal blinds in our dinning room for decorations.

Then after the holidays, I put them all in the santa box (with the envelopes so I make sure I have the right address) and store with my decorations. The next year, I will take out the cards, cut the front off (if there is no writing on the inside) and use them for tags for gifts. This year I cut up last years cards and used them to stick on bark I made for friends at church. I typed the bark recipe and glued it to the back of the tag with their names and from our names. They turned out really cute. So that's what I do with our cards. Kind of recycle them I guess. =)

Last year, I collected used greeting cards and donated them to St. Judes Ranch. See website hyperlink below. They take all kinds of cards, except certain character brands (I guess for licensing reasons). I collected a huge amount and mailed them to St. Judes.

http://www.stjudesranch.org/shop/recycled-card-program/

If the cards contain family photos, I just put those in a photo album/scrapbook or scan.

We hang all the cards we receive on a closet door in our living room. I also hang up the fanciest bows off of our presents, and make a really nice display out of all of it. It stays there until probably September or October of the next year, as a nice reminder of those who love us and think of us and that we love and miss.

When I take them down, I tie a ribbon around the stack and put it in my box of Christmas cards. I suppose one year I'll just throw the whole little box away, but for now, I keep them.

I have a spot in my butler pantry where I display all the cards we receive.

At the end of the season, I throw most of them away except for picture cards that are of family and some friends.

I use Shutterfly to make the card I send out which has a few pictures of daughter, family, during the year.

I have ribbon on my kitchen cabinets. During the holiday we enjoy the cards by clothes pinning them to the ribbon. After the holidays, I cut the pretty cards and recycle them for gift tags for next year. Often the picture ones get put on a bulletin board in my laundry area. Sometimes I trim off the Christmas greeting to save space. So I get to enjoy the pictures year round.

We hang them up around the doorway in the kitchen all season as they arrive in the mail, and leave them hanging until about January 7 or so. I save the picture cards from close family and friends, and toss the rest.

I keep all the photo cards. The rest I reuse as gift tags for Christmas gifts!!! Lots of them have beautiful pictures on them! Sometimes I use the whole card for a big gift, sometimes I just cut out certain parts/pictures of the card, hole punch and tie it on with ribbon!

I keep the photos and recycle the cards.

O. year I did make my own gift tags for the next year.

Mostly toss them with the rest of the paper recyclables. If they're photo cards I keep them.

I leave them up on the fireplace mantle for the holiday and throw them out. To be honest I don't care much for them and would much prefer to give and receive holiday wishes by email....
We have some friends who send us a card and a picture of their family that they print on their home computer...I like that much better than the generic holiday card from the store.
Good luck.

Current year cards get put on the door frame with garland and ornaments. Last years cards get converted into gift tags and or ornaments or even converted into gift wrap by glueing to to plain wraping paper over a gift adding ribbons, bows, and ornaments.

All cards coming my way get a second life.

Photo cards are adding to my digital collection and a collage of them are created for either printing later or sending out as a reminder of our Christmas cheer.

I would say 80% of the holiday cards I get are photo cards. Since I am camera shy (or whatever is more extreme than that!), we do ours with art work from my daughter who is an artist. This is the 3rd year we have done that and they are well received. Kind of a mini art show! She is 18 now and starts Art school (college) next month after a semester off since graduating High School last June.

Photo cards I save and have a collage in a family room hallway downstairs. Its pretty snug now, but the several years worth of photos, now that that is so popular and cheap to do is fun to look at!

Regular cards I save for projects the next year for my daycare (santa type ones). If they are penguin/snowman, etc and more winter than Christmas, we use this season for projects and cutting skills. Most are just too pretty to trash!

If they are picture cards, I put them on my refrigerator. If they are just cards, I usually through them in my Christmas tote. Then the following year I refer to them for who I send them out to. Then yes, I usually toss them.

My aunt Betty used to do things with hers, like cut them in circles then laminate them into a place mat. She was creative like that.

I have a cousin who uses them to make homemade Christmas cards the following year.

I prefer photo cards as it gives me a sneak peak at how the family is growing.

****Oh and I tape mine around the opening area between my living room and kitchen and keep them up until after I take decorations down. Then the picture cards go on the fridge and so on.

I cut out the picture ones and put them in collage-type frames in our family room, updating them each year, if they are close friends or family. For the non-picture ones, I take a Tag shaped punch and make my gift tags for the next year out of some. The rest I donate to the school. Our special education program will use them as templates to help the students with their fine motor skills. Learning how to cut is one of the things that they continually work on over time, and that really helps the department out.

I use to tape them to a door near the living room for the holidays, but this year in our new house I am putting them around a large living-room window. After the holdidays I do get rid of them, but I do enjoy getting them to add to my decorations each year.

I do send them because for some people that is all I can afford to give them & it lets them know I am thinking about them.

Hope you find something else to do.

I love getting a Christmas card, especially a photo one. But, I have to admit that I usually end up tossing them shortly after the holidays. Between all the stuff my husband and I have, and all the pictures and projects we save from the kids...we've accumulated a lot of stuff. I just don't have the room to keep them and can't handle the clutter. The cards still bring a holiday cheer into our home every year! And I love the idea of using them as gift tags.

My friend cuts the pictures from the front and saves them to use as name tags on next year's Christmas packages.

I display all the cards we receive in a Christmas tree shaped metal hanging display I got at Pier 1. After the holidays are over, I toss all the cards. I don't consider it a waste for the folks who sent it to me - most are photo cards, so they basically sent me a $2 picture that me and my family enjoyed on display for two weeks.

If you are worried about it being tossed, try doing the magnet photo cards. You can get them at Hallmark and similar places. People will be more likely to leave them on their fridge longer than just the few weeks of Christmas/New Years.

We have been doing family photo cards for, probably about 15 years.
I save all the photo cards I receive and put them in my albums.
Regular cards, I sometimes save and cut up to make gift tags (especially if they have extra pretty graphics or embellishments.)
Everything else gets displayed and enjoyed during the holidays, then tossed out or recycled!

I love sending and receiving real holiday cards. I'm really not a fan of ecards.

I keep the photo cards for the hypothetical albums I intend to make someday in the never future. LOL

I sometimes cut up a cover of to make gift tags for the next year. The first grade classes at the school use Christmas card fronts for craft projects.

I have a page pinned on my board (not a site on Pinterest, actual magazine page thumb tacked to a cork board) showing how to cut circles from the cards to make 3d ornaments. I might try that.

I display the cards throughout the holidays then I put the photo cards in a scrapbook and cut out decorative touches from the other cards to enhance the pages. It is so much fun to look at our family and friends through the years!

I put them in a book.

We send out family/kids pictures for ours.. Which I just picked up tonight. ugh

let the kids have at them with the art box. my kids used to make bookmarks and ornaments etc out of them. there are some beautiful christmas cards out there. I run a craft show ever year at our parish and there is a lady who makes the most beautiful framed pictures with christmas cards.

What do we/I do with all the ones we receive?
It is displayed during the holidays.
I make note of anyone who has a new address etc. and update my own records for it.
After the Holidays, I throw them away.
If I kept every card received over the years and this year, then that is another thing, to store/keep/clutter the house with.

If you don't want to buy or send any "card"... then there are e-cards. Sent to people via e-mail address.
Saves paper and cost.

My mom used to make Christmas Tree ornaments for all the neices, nephews and her children and give them as gifts. She would get a nice peice of wood and have my dad cut the wood into 1/2" thick oblong disks. Then she would cut the front scene of the cards and glue it to the wood with hodge podge. Then she would file the edges of the card until they matched perfectly to the shape of the wood. Then do one more coat of hodge podge to make it smooth and glossy. Then dad would drill a small hole for the ribbon or hook and she would write a little message on the back for each child. They were so nice and I still to this day love taking them out and hanging them on my tree. I think that has to be the best re-use of a Christmas card that I've ever witnessed!

Merry Chirstmas!

We get a lot of photo ones and we tape them to one of the doors in our kitchen. After the season, we typically toss them. Sometimes I'll find them in the boxes of Christmas stuff the next year though.