Now it’s time to wind down from the holidays. Wow, this year was a whirlwind! We are in the middle of trying to take down decorations and clean up our cluttered house. Although, the clean up process is going to be a bit different this year. I am not going to stash away my holiday cards like I have done in the past. Sometimes I can’t just throw them away or recycle them and then I read about how St. Jude’s Ranch for Children will take the front of used holiday greeting cards and make new ones.
Finally a solution I feel good about. St. Judes takes the front of the old cards and pastes it to new backings made from recycled paper. The result is a new “green” card. They are then sold as a fundraiser with the children earning money for each card that they make. I thought this was the perfect answer for my “save or recycle” dilemma. Knowing me I will probably still save the inside of the card but you can bet that the fronts of my cards will be going to St. Jude’s.
You can send the whole card or just remove the front. I am assuming that this applies to traditional greeting cards only. Unless, you have a folding photo card where the photo is on the inside and the front of the card has a generic greeting. You may only get a few traditional cards during the holiday season but just think if we ALL sent them in…… That is A LOT of cards and a huge movement towards helping these children. It would only take a second to toss them in the mail and why not get your kids involved. Heck, my kids are always trying to get their hands on some scissors. (Not really age appropriate but great for older kiddos). While you are at it what a wonderful opportunity to talk to your children about what you are doing and why you are sending these to St. Jude’s. My kids love to put mail in the mailbox so let them “mail” the package. They are such good little helpers these days. 🙂
Here is the address to mail the cards:
St. Jude’s Ranch for Children
Card Recycling Program
100 St. Jude’s Street
Boulder City, Nevada 89005
Please visit the link below for more information. You can also buy cards for almost all occasions.
http://stjudesranch.org/help_card.php
If your cards are not appropriate for some reason then cut them and use the designs as gift tags for next year. Again, you could make it an art and crafts type of day with your children. This is a fun activity during the dreary winter weather.
Thanks for reading!
5 comments
We keep our cards in a basket all year and each night we pull one card, talk about the family or person (why they are special to us, maybe a story or memory), and then say a little prayer. This year I am hoping to send the family or person a little note telling them that we said a prayer for them and how special they are to us. That way we use our cards all year …Love the St. Jude’s idea also (special place to me), but we don’t get too many non-picture cards anymore!
I keep a scrapbook of the pictures we receive in/on Holiday cards from each year. I cut to reduce the size and leave the smiling faces to build a collage labeled by year. It’s fun to go back and look through and see how our friends’ families have changed and grown over the years. Love that I now have a good place to send the non-picture ones for re-use! Thanks!!
This is a great, green option for cards. Do you mind if I link this article to my blog and maybe use the St. Jude’s image with the post? I find it particularly relevant to one of my passions, Bear My Heart, and its efforts to support cancer research and other causes that need all of our help. Oh, the blog is at: bearmyheart.blogspot.com and accompanies http://www.BearMyHeart.com. Thanks for your contributions to the community!
That would be great! Thanks for reading!
We do this at our house and give the fronts of any card, anniversary, birthday, thank you, any note that you get and we give to the local nursing home here and they turn them inot the most beautiful bookmarks!! I’ve done this for years….Pass it on!