January is always a good time to clear out the old and make room for the new, and that goes for even mundane things like cleaning out old bills and files. All that paper means putting our shredder machine to good use, and the end result of all that shredding? A wintery snowman craft!

To make the snowmen, save any shredding scraps you have, and set them out in a bin or sheet of newspaper to contain the mess.

You only need to press clumps of the shredded paper together with your hands and it will stick together, as all the pieces intertwine. Nothing wrong with a good old paper snowball fight at this stage, if your kids are so inclined!

Once we had “snowballs” of various sizes, we stacked them into a snowman, gluing the layers together. Admittedly this was a little inexact – the balls looked more like lumps once glued, but the basic idea was there.

We stuck in orange pipe cleaners as carrot noses, and I coiled black pipe cleaners to be top hats.

Far more rewarding than this little craft, though, was Travis’s glee for all that shredded paper simply as a material.

He played games with it for ages, pretending it was “grass clippings” (yes, we like to pretend we’re landscapers around here) and then happily cleaning it with his toy tools.

What other fun uses can you think of for all that shredded paper? Please share in the comments! What a great way to recycle last year’s boring paperwork.