I think we can all agree we dislike junk mail. It clutters up our mailboxes and often just ends up filling the trash can and then heads on to the local landfill with no purpose. Seems so wasteful and pointless. Don’t despair, we have some great ways to reuse and repurpose junk mail!
Up until the last few weeks, anytime we received junk mail we would chuck it in the trash. Occasionally if we were feeling angst about the junk mail we received, we would give it one rip in half and then throw it out.
Then I had an idea. One day I received some junk mail and instead of just throwing it out, I opened it to see if there was any reusable paper in it. To my surprise, there was a piece of paper with junk solicitation written on one side and the other side was a blank white sheet of paper. I went to my printer and the paper was the same size as my blank printer paper and thus spawned my idea of how to re-purpose junk mail!
Now that I am selling online, each week I find myself printing a lot of mailing labels on plain white printer paper that I used to purchase in a ream of paper at the store. As a means to cut costs on shipping supplies and reuse paper instead of throwing it out, I now reuse paper that may have printing on one side.
So if you happen to get a package from me, your mailing label likely is printed on the back of a re-purposed piece of junk mail solicitation from cell phone ads to credit card offers. Before printing on the back of the paper, I make sure there is no personal identifying information like my account number just to be on the safe side. As you can see in the pictures, if there is information like this I tear it off before sitting it on my printer, ready for the next print job.
Sometimes the junk mail does not contain any reusable pieces of paper big enough for a mailing label but there are other finds like small note card sizes that are perfect to reuse as scratch paper for those of us who are list making fanatics!
Although I would love for the junk mail to stop coming, I now find myself actually looking forward to ripping open the envelope and scouring the contents to see what reusable goodies I can find. I know, it’s pretty sad what excites me in my life but I’m a proponent of finding joy in even the smallest of life’s random events!
As a side note, If you have a magic answer on how we can stop/decrease these unwanted solicitations of junk mail I would be thrilled to know!
***If you enjoyed reading this post, please join our other regular readers and subscribe to this blog by clicking here .We are so grateful to our regular readers and feel so blessed, thank you all!
To find out where we’re linking up, click here to see our link list.
Like this? Please share it! 
0
0
0
0
0000
My mom reads my blog via email subscription so not signed up to leave comments on here so thought I would share this from her. She just emailed me a free number to call to be on the do not send junk mail list that she just found- YAY!!!! So here it is: 1-888-567-8688. I’m going to call right now!
Junk mail also often contains prepaid/Freepost envelopes. You can stick your own label and postage on those, too.
Recently I received junk mail from one of those shops that buy your gold. I didn’t have any gold and if I had, I wouldn’t have given it to them, but the mailing contained a prepaid envelope for registered mail! It would cost them to receive it back, so I stuffed it with a few pizza and other take-away menus that had come through or door and sent it back. Just couldn’t resist.
They send me their junk, I send them mine.
A family member told me that idea too, to stick some junk in their return envelope and send it back! I tried reusing all the envelopes in junk mail but it seems these days they preprint with a special bar code that sends the mail to the junk mail company it originated from. For example, I tried to reuse an envelope to send in my car insurance and the junk mail company sent it back to me with a notice about this bar code thing- oops! I guess if you somehow cover that up you can completely reuse the envelopes and trust your mail goes where you want it to
I haven’t tried it yet but you could make paper beads. They’re so pretty!
Not only the junk, but the envelopes make nice beads, if they’re the ones with designs printed on the inside for security. Make cylinder beads out of junk letters, then wrap with strips of the security print papers. Very pretty!
I love it! What a fun way to repurpose junk mail and have creative jewelry to wear or give as gifts, I will have to give that a try
Great ideas! I hate junk mail. I did opt out as in comment 1 years ago but still get plenty!
We’re amazed at how much junk mail we get, especially during election season!! We called the # to opt out but it wanted our social security #’s and we weren’t comfortable with that so just keep getting the junk in the mail!
I’ve given my youngest some junk mail to play with before. She like to send “mail” to her friends and this kept her out of the good paper, envelopes and cards.
We started giving our 14 month old daughter the heavy/thick paper election junk mail we get and she loves it! It doesn’t tear easily and we can fold it into fun shapes and she has fun playing with it, she actually likes it better than her “real” baby toys right now
We use it for the kiddos, too! Fridge art! Without using my printer paper!
Ooohhh, that’s another great idea! I just bought our daughter some chunky crayons and going to start having her do art now that she’s officially a toddler so will definitely be using some of our junk mail paper for this- thanks for sharing this great idea!!
great idea! I always use this type of paper for my kids to do their crafts on. It beats killing more trees and spending more money on new paper. Thanks for sharing at Repurposed Ideas Weekly.
So true, it definitely beats using up more trees and saving money