I always keep them around and re-use them as long as I can (sometimes re-wrapping with plain brown paper if necessary or ripping the bubble part out from the paper).

Also:

- give them to anyone you know who is moving
- save to pack away Christmas decorations or other breakables
- patch together and wrap with cardboard and/or fabric to make a gardening knee-pad
- use the same technique to make a padded seat for hard chairs, children sitting on the floor, going to sporting events etc.

That’s not really taking advantage of the envelope-ness though….

You could try offering them on freecycle (http://freecycle.org to find your local group). There were some offered on the Chester site recently and they were very popular!

I reuse them for holding those preprinted address labels that come from all kinds of charities, who send them each time you make a donation and some even when you don’t.

To springboard off what the “other” Megan said - can you get a bunch of those envelopes together and cover them with a water-proof material? This could be used as a cushion for your knees while gardening.

If you are selling your jewellery (especially if you seel on-line and need to post it occasionaly) then it would be wise to hold on to these envelopes. Just cut them to size and glue bright paper over it - this way you would have a safe and personal way of posting your fragile items.

A specialized use:

These are very useful for physics projects in which one must protect a falling egg. Egg drops, we called them.

I’d imagine most people do not have this problem, but… :)

My cat loves these to sleep on as they are nice and spongy and don’t tear when she kneads them! She has two of them going at the moment, both underneath chairs. They have been in use since Dec 06! and she hasn’t got bored of them since :)

When I used to work at a library - we used the padded envelopes over & over to mail books. I rarely buy padded envelopes, as I re-use the ones I receive…(And the new ones cost $1 a piece sometimes!)

I’m an avid ebay user and have tones of these all sorted into size. When I have finished selling all my stuff any left over envelopes are going on ebay as a bulk buy. Always re-use.

I work in a company that regularly mails and delivers books. As long as the envelopes aren’t too dog-eared, I re-use them, put on a sticker w the new address, and I put on another sticker saying: ‘Packaging can be recycled and reused. Please recycle or reuse this packaging.’
I hope that by setting the example, I am contributing to general awareness. It also saves us a lot of money, as padded envelopes are costly.