Reduce Reuse Recycle

Remember when I revealed my minor obsession with adoration for address labels?

Vistaprint is the source of many of my personalized address labels and, unfortunately, the smallest batch of labels one can order from the site is 140, which means I have looooooots of extras.

In addition to these beauties, though, I also receive a ton of address labels from the various charitable organizations we support.  In fact, the number of labels I get sent by charities is totally overkill -- it would be MORE than enough for a business, and I'm just one person!  I don't even KNOW that many people to send cards to!  ;)

When we moved last year, that meant the many address labels I'd been hoarding storing quickly became useless.  Technically I could have still used them (because luckily, mail never really comes back to me as undelivered) but there was no need, since I quickly received new address labels in the mail with my new correct address information on them.  So, what to do with all those old labels??

Reduce, reuse, recycle, of course!!!

I cut them up and created homemade stickers for a special set of twins I know!  There are pumpkin stickers, snowflake stickers, cartoon animal stickers, shape stickers, and more...

I simply hate waste, so my first instinct is always to brainstorm a creative way to re-purpose an item in lieu of tossing it.  I don't know if it's the good example my mom set for me as a kid {she did work for the town supervisor's office so knew all the recycling rules!} or my elementary school science fair project of creating recycled paper out of shredded newspaper that set me on this path, but I am a recycling addict!  This was a very easy way to re-purpose address labels I no longer needed AND create a little DIY gift for Lauren & Natalie... a win-win!  I'm not sure if they ever actually used them, but I sure had fun creating them.  :)

Happy Belated Earth Day!!!  What did you do to celebrate Earth Day?  Any recent recycling projects you care to share?  I love me a good recycling experience!!!