It's that time of year again - wrapping paper, packaging and consumerism abound, setting off my unsustainable alarm bells.  To soothe them back to charming jingles, check this awesome list of everyday items repurposed for the holidays plus creative uses for holiday-themed goods.  My favorite is creating a table runner out of last year's holiday cards - gives you the opportunity to revive the memories while creating new ones.

New Uses for Christmas Items

Happy Holidays, everyone, and Best Wishes for the New Year!

Many of us have already switched to using compact fluorescent light bulbs, both for their money-saving and energy-saving qualities.  But if you have a light fixture that reveals the bulb... well, it didn't exactly become the high point of your interior designs.  Hide it under a bushel?  No!  Now you can let your eco-friendly bulbs shine proudly, with a fabulous new design called the Plumen 001!

This designer bulb uses 80% less energy and lasts 8 times longer than standard incandescent bulbs.  It has an estimated life of 8 full years - wow!  Realized by the product design firm Hulger, with assistance from British designer Samuel Wilkinson, the Plumen 001's name is derived from the word “plume,” which describes a bird’s large and showy feather.  We think you'll definitely want to show this one off.  The bulb is artistic in nature, appearing in a variety of organic shapes and sculptural outlines when viewed from different angles.

We've seen flat-packed Ikea furniture that took hours to assemble, cardboard furniture that -- while sustainable -- fails to impress, and spent hours looking for the missing allen wrench to tighten that wobbly leg.  Forget all that.

Spring has sprung, you can feel it in the air!  It's time for Spring Cleaning again!  Of course we all want a cleaner house, but we don’t want to spend money, and we especially don’t want to use chemicals.  Here are 35 ways to address those dirty issues with natural materials and household items you already own.

What do you get when you cross elegant table linens with regular kitchen paper towels?  MYdrap, a convenient way to dress up your table with individual cocktail napkins, lunch or dinner napkins and placemats that come right off the roll, perforated for easy dispensing.  But don't throw them away just yet -- each piece is washable and reusable up to six times!

Made from 100% cotton fibers, this recyclable, biodegradable and reusable product is the sustainable bees knees for dinner table presto-change-o.  And, they've been making this quality product for nearly a hundred years in different forms.