5 Ways to Avoid the Gift Wrapping Blues

Don’t skimp on the festive bows and paper, Patch is here to help with a few gift wrapping tips.

Have it wrapped for you locally: The days of stores offering complementary gift wrapping is a dying tradition. But at least two local stores will still wrap your gifts: Unique Ideas ‘N More and . Unique Ideas will wrap anything they customize in a crisp white bag with bright red and green tissue and tulle bow, all for free. Barnes and Noble invites civic groups to staff their wrapping station, allowing you to have your gifts wrapped for a donation to their charity. If no group is at the station, customers can wrap their own gifts using the store’s (free) paper.

Head to the mall: West County Mall is offering gift wrapping next to Nordstrom, for a charitable donation to the INERTIA School of Dance. The human volunteers from Support Dogs, Inc. will be wrapping gifts at South County Center next to Dillard's for a charitable donation.

Order it online: Brick and mortar stores might not offer wrapping departments, but the elves at Amazon still do! If you order your gift online at Amazon you can have your gift wrapped for an extra $4 to $6 and have it delivered right under the tree.

Buy a bag: If you need to wrap your gifts at home, avoid the mess of tape and scissors and buy gift bags. It’s pretty simple to place a gift in the bag, then stuff several pieces of tissue paper on top to disguise the contents. Gift bags and colorful tissue paper can be purchased at any discount or department store.

Cool wrap made easy: If you want stellar wrapping without (most of) the headache, check out for adhesive trim, sticky backed ribbon and beautiful self-sticking bows. You can also check out this gift wrapping tutorial from Real Simple magazine for advice on perfect wrapping.