How to Make Welcome Bags, Boxes & Bundles

Each semester, my sorority, and hundreds of others like it around the country, hold a rush or recruitment week. This is the week where ladies around campus show their interest in our organization and we take the time to help them get to know us. At the end of this week comes the all-important Bid Day (this is not always the name for it, depending on the school and/or organization you are referring to). This is when a committee specifically selected to organize Bid Day get together and extend bids to all ladies who qualify to receive one. As an added bonus, my chapter, a few years back, changed the way we did things. My bid was extended to me over the phone. Now, instead, we have adopted a more personal approach. We visit each lady, personally, at her home or in her dorm room. Generally this visit includes a rose, a lot of crying and screaming, and a Welcome Bag. What goes into a Welcome Bag is the point of this article.

Welcome bags don't necessarily have to be from a sorority to welcome new sisters. They can be created by Residential Advisors for new freshmen on their dormitory floor, by Girl Scouts (or similar organizations) for new scouts. Basically anytime you want to make someone feel welcomed, a welcome bag could be appropriate. Also, welcome bag ideas translate well to "cheer-up" bags, "get well soon" bags, or Christmas stockings.

Bags

Start with a container. We use brown paper lunch sacks because they are easily customized but a small plastic bucket or pail would work just as well. We spend an entire afternoon decorating bags. They always have our Greek letters (Alpha Sigma Alpha) and the word "Welcome" printed somewhere on them, either by hand with markers or with letter stickers. Decorate your bags in a way that best represents the organization or situation you are welcoming people into.

Toys

Don't be afraid of the "Everything for a Buck" stores. This advice holds true for everything but especially toys. At a dollar store, you can often find trinkets and toys for a dollar that you would pay four or five for somewhere else. One example I found is travel checkers games. These are often found in the stationary and party supply section of any discount or grocery store and they generally come in a package of four, sometimes six. This sounds like a great deal but check out the price tag. $4? $5? Maybe even $6. $6! That makes each game a dollar. But hit the dollar store and you can find the same six pack of travel checkers games for … yes, you guessed it: One dollar.

Small toys such as these travel-sized checkers games, miniature playing cards, rubber balls, and puzzles that make you figure out how to get the ball through the maze with all of the parts contained inside a plastic cube, make great welcome bag stuffers. Keep your trinkets small; remember, you are working with a brown paper lunch sack.

Other toy-like items you might consider are pocket-sized word search or crossword puzzles, a coloring activity book with a 12 count box of crayons, or a book of brain teasers or unusual factoids.

Candy

Check out the check out lanes at the grocery store. Many times you can find fun candy items, such as Pop Rocks, Bottle Pops and Ring Pops, for just a few cents. At thirty cents a piece (which is about the price I usually pay for my welcome bag candy), that makes them three for a buck, not a bad deal if you are working on a budget. Also, fruity candies like the Ring Pops or Pop Rocks are more sensible if you are shopping blindly and don't know what kinds of allergies you may have to worry about; a safety which chocolate and peanut buttery treats don't provide. Another candy-like item in the check out lane is gum. A five-stick pack of any variety of Wrigley's gums (DoubleMint, Juicy Fruit, Big Red) often sells for twenty cents, sometimes a quarter per pack. That's four, or five, for a dollar. You're getting off cheap, my friend.

Other "food stuffs" to consider might include the smaller sized bags of microwave popcorn (remember I am stuffing bags for sorority, i.e. college, girls, so I base a lot of my shopping on the assumption at least some of them will be living in a dorm room), pretzels, trail mixes, and dried fruit. Steer clear of anything readily perishable. One thing to note, however, is that mint gum has a tendency to make everything else taste minty if left in an enclosed area for too long so keep your mint gum away from your bubble gum until you are ready to hand them out.

Health Products

Health products that work well in these bags are pocket-sized packets of tissues, Wetnaps (I'm not advocating stuffing your purse with these the next time you visit your local Wing Stop), trial-sized bottles of waterless hand sanitizer, and a travel-sized assortment of bandages. Think about what you might carry in your purse (or steal out of your girlfriend's purse) and throw a few of those things into the bag. If it's small enough to fit in a purse, it's the perfect size for a welcome bag.

Hygiene products

Since health and hygiene often go hand in hand we will use this opportunity to talk about hygiene products to stuff in the bags. Be careful with these as you don't want to offend your new found friends. Trial-sized bottles of cinnamon or vanilla flavored mouthwash, a holder for transporting your toothbrush or soap in your luggage, a small container of cotton swabs, pre-soaked nail polish removal pads, one-time-use face masks or foot scrubs are all great things to put in the bags. Trial-sized deodorants, ordinary bars of soap, ordinary mouthwash (the kind that could pull double-duty as a paint remover), these things may be perceived as insulting by some people (remember, sensitivity is the word of the day in our society).

Beauty products

These are not, probably, items that would go into a generic bag, for, say, residents in a dorm (unless you are the advisor in an all-female residence hall) however they work splendidly. A great time to buy these kinds of items is during the holidays. They go on sale or come in packages which may not be available throughout the rest of the year because they work so well as stocking stuffers. Some examples of excellent welcome bag beauty products are miniature nail files (especially ones with key rings attached), miniature bottles of nail polish (look for the most unusual and outrageous colors you can find, that way the message of "this is all for fun" is sure to be heard; that way you don't have to worry about picking out colors any random, anonymous girl will like), pots of flavored lip gloss, or roll-on glitter sticks.

Of course, because I have been filling these bags for females for several years, many of my ideas lean toward the feminine. But, save for "beauty" products, most of these ideas will work for males as well. And with males you can be a little more "offensive" - that is to say, whereas a girl would appreciate a fruit-scented body wash but might perceive an ordinary bar of soap as an insult, a guy would prefer the bar of soap over the body wash. While a guy may not have a purse in which to carry things like pocket-sized tissues or bottles of hand sanitizer, they are still useful and practical welcome bag stuffers.

The rule of thumb is if it is something you would find in a loaded purse, it will work well in a welcome bag. Of course, you aren't going to find a lot of loaded purses with travel checkers tucked away inside but they would fit, and that's the basic idea. Anything you would want if you were opening up this bag is also a great guideline.