Household Items To Use As Christmas Ornaments

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With the economy having taken such a hard hit this year, the last thing any household needs is an added expense, but something all homes need is a little cheer. If you’re hoping to deck out your home for the holidays, you can quickly find that all of the knick-knacks from the lights to the ornaments to the yule logs become quite expensive. Everything adds up fast. You grab one cute table centerpiece here and one more wreath for another door, and suddenly you’ve spent quite a bit on just decorating for the holidays – that’s not even to speak of what you’ll spend on holiday presents.

Luckily, with a little innovation, you can find ways to decorate your Christmas tree with things you already have at home. Ultimately, your Christmas tree should be a reflection of your life and your loved ones, so it makes sense to use items that you’ve accumulated through living and loving. Plus, those traditional round and glittery ornaments always shatter – who thought to make something that gets packed up in boxes so incredibly fragile? Skip the hassle of cleaning up broken ornaments and paying for new ones, and just use some of these household items you already have to decorate your tree.

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Old toys

If you have children you may have accumulated many tiny toys over the years between toy cars and stuffed animals and trolls and happy meal trinkets. These make excellent Christmas tree ornaments, so you don’t need to toss them in the trash. You can even have a themed tree, or have certain portions of the tree match a theme, like all cars or all Disney characters on different sections.

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Gift wrapping ribbons

Here’s one thing you likely already bought plenty of for the holiday season: ribbons. Shiny satin ribbons, glittery ribbons, skinny ribbons, wide ribbons. Grab your extra ribbons and drape them around your Christmas tree for an instant boost of color. Or, you can use your scissors to curl pieces and dangle those individually or attach them to others in a bundle.

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Excess fabric

Do you have old jeans you were going to throw out? Or excess fabric from your sewing projects? All you need is a needle, thread, and any sort of stuffing (cotton balls, other fabric, packing popcorn) and you can make ornaments of any shape. Cut two stars out of your denim, place your stuffing between the two pieces, and seal the edges.

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Costume jewelry

Even if you’ve upgraded to wearing real jewelry, you may still want to hang onto your plastic pearls, “jewels”, “diamonds,” “gold chains,” and more.  If you have some with clasps, you can open these, and string them around the larger part of the tree. Necklaces that don’t have clasps and cannot be opened can be draped over the smaller, top area of the tree.

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Puzzle pieces

Whether you’ve taken up puzzling during the pandemic or have always loved a good puzzle, you may have boxes of puzzle pieces lying around. Use these to create ornaments. You can even take completed portions of puzzles depicting beautiful scenery, glue the pieces in place, and use that section as an ornament.

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Old light bulbs

Not sure how to dispose of your dead light bulbs? Don’t toss them out just yet. They’re perfect bases for homemade Christmas ornaments. With simple paint and stickers, you can turn them into snowmen. Or you can draw snowflakes on them, or simply cover them in glitter. A string will easily attach to the base of the bulb for hanging.

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Sheet music

If you already know a song by heart or no longer play your instrument, your sheet music can still be of use. The symbols are beautiful, and slightly yellowed sheet music paper has a vintage look. If you’re handy with Origami, use sheet music to add something special to your creations. If you have clear, round ornaments, you can fill them with shredded sheet music to make them more appealing.

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Extra buttons

Most of the coats and jackets you’ve bought over the years came with an extra button, which you may have stashed in drawers and bowls around the house. You can make simple and adorable ornaments by taking a piece of ribbon, tying a chunky knot at one end, and stringing buttons onto it at the top, unknotted end. Or you can super glue buttons onto wine corks, or a yarn ball.

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Cinnamon sticks

Cinnamon sticks are classic holiday items. You may have bought a bundle because your spiced rum cake and hot toddy recipes called for them, but now you have plenty of extras. It’s easy to make charming ornaments with these by simply gluing them in any formation you want, like a heart, or an angel. You can also paint each individual one to look like snowmen or Santa Claus.

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Pinecones

Pinecones are so beautiful in and of themselves, and when you add a few details, they go from simple nature items to gorgeous ornaments. Collect pine cones around your neighborhood, then speckle their edges with a little white paint and glitter to make them look snowed on. Add a ribbon to the base, and you have an ornament.

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Water bottles

Have you ever looked at the bottom of a water bottle or plastic soda jug? The pedals of the base look like a flower. Cut off the tops, and you can make ornaments out of just the bottoms. Paint them to look like flowers or snowflakes. It’s a great way to reduce, reuse, and recycle if you feel bad about buying plastic bottles.

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Toilet paper rolls

Toilet paper and paper towel rolls can make perfect bases for all kinds of Christmas tree ornaments. You can do something simple, like decorate the rolls with stickers, paint, and glitter. Or you can attach pieces of cotton balls to make them look like Santa Claus. If you have feathers from another DIY project, you can layer them on the rolls to look like a bird, and add buttons for eyes.

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Scrabble

If you’d like to put the names of your family members on the tree, or words that are important to you, you can do so with some simple scrabble pieces (so long as you don’t want to use the game anymore). You can simply glue the letters in the order you’d like them to appear, vertically, on a piece of ribbon, and use the top ends to hang it.

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Popsicle sticks

Popsicle sticks are very versatile when it comes to DIY Christmas ornaments. You can glue them together to look like a tree, a sled, a log cabin, and all sorts of charming items. Or, by simply overlaying a few in the right configuration, you can make a snowflake. Then you just add glitter and hang them. You can also create little photo frames with them, and put small pictures of your loved ones within them.