Packing Supplies and Solutions

We all hit a point in our lives when we should be focusing on the more mature things, the responsibilities that are upcoming, daunting, and a little worrying. These are the things we are likely to put off longer than we should simply because accepting the reality of our near future is a scary and uncertain thought.

These are the things, though, that we usually can’t afford to put off, and so when we do we end up putting ourselves behind schedule or even missing out on opportunities, causing us to settle for less. These things usually manifest in buying a home, planning a wedding, looking for a new job, or relocating to a new city.

I find myself in the home buying and wedding planning categories. These are, perhaps, two of the most exciting things for a mid 20-year-old, but they’re also scary to think about if you don’t know the entire process or have the help you wish you had.

The good thing is, I’ve got at least a year to plan the wedding and around 10 months to start looking for new homes. My fiancee is great about looking for homes (far more than I am), so I’m thankful to have someone at my side who is even more enthusiastic about the entire process than I am.

The thing we’ll need to consider when the move does come, though, is having plenty of cheap moving boxes to pack all of our smaller belongings in. We’re lucky to have her dad, who owns a furniture store, since he’ll enlist help on moving and has plenty of trailers to put all of our furniture in (and he gives us new furniture from his store, too). In fact, we’re extremely lucky for these things since it makes the entire moving process much simpler and less stressful than if we were to not have him.

So really, it just comes down to being prepared for the move by having everything boxed up in these cheap moving boxes. Finding or purchasing some won’t be any hassle at all. It’s just all about having everything ready to go when the move comes.

And yeah, I won’t mention the home buying process itself since that’s an entirely different beast altogether, one that will rear its head in about 6 months. That’s when the excitement and stress truly begins. That’s when I’m sure my fiancee and I will have many a debate and stressful conversation about the future of our little life, since buying a home is no small task.

Over 4th of July Weekend I finished a 300+ page novel. In fact, I did it in just three days without devoting more than 8 or 9 hours total to the book.

It’s been a very, very long time since I’ve read this much in such a short amount of time. I’m not sure if the author was so compelling that I was blazing through the material wanting more or if I was just in the zone and would’ve finished any book in this time. What I do know, however, is that I sincerely miss reading that much.

Let’s take a step back. I used to read a lot of novels in middle school and early high school. Like, at least one a week. And I was happy when I read. I was healthy, I slept better at night, and I felt like my vocabulary expanded a reasonable amount. There was nothing else I would have rather done with a few hours to myself than read. It would get to the point that I would bring my book anytime my parents drove me anywhere (whether it was a two hour drive or just a 15 minute hike down the road to the grocery). I’d say “Hold on, hold on, I’ve got to finish this page” when they would be getting out of the car, and it would get on their nerves at times.

I want to revisit that time in my life by reading as much as I used to. I want to feel like I’m actively gaining knowledge and experiences and analyzing the material I read from multiple perspectives, too. I used to read just for fantasy’s sake, to escape. But now, I want to bring into my life what I read and make it a part of who I am.

There’s much to be said about reading habits, different genres, what sorts of authors you like, and if you’re a fast or slow reader. None of that truly matters if you simply are reading, I believe.

I think buying books is one of the best investments anyone could make, because that single book can be read multiple times by multiple people. It can impart its knowledge and its stories on you many times in your life, each time giving you a new perspective on the same content.

That’s why I use packaging supplies to create makeshift bookmarks and leave my annotations in books. I’ll fold up packing tape as a cheap (i.e., pretty much free) bookmark and I’m known to write little notes within pages on some cheap label tape. Heck, I’ll put label tape on the covers of my books with specific things like “read again in ____” with a year in the blank. Packaging supplies have been a great way for me to enhance my reading experience while also keeping organized enough to know when I last read something and what I learned from it.

When it comes to planning for the holidays, things can get out of hand and you can underestimate the amount of guests you have coming over. Heck, you can underestimate the amount of hot dogs you’ll need for the grill and even short yourself of beer for when the night goes on!

Planning, then, all comes down to being prepared more than anything. It’s okay to get more alcohol than you think you’ll need. Why? Because you can still drink it the weekend following! It’s fine to have more meat than you figure you’ll grill, because you can just grill it all the next day to get rid of any excess you had. It’s all a win win so long as you have enough.

But what happens when you’re underprepared and understocked? Well, people get hungry, people sober up, and the evening isn’t as fun for everyone as they had originally thought.

That’s why I’ve got a short list of supplies you’ll absolutely need when this weekend rolls around. I’ll have you so stocked that you can party Thursday night through Sunday afternoon!

Party supplies.

These include your fireworks, the napkins and paper plates, and other random office or even shipping supplies you wouldn’t think of to begin with. For example, don’t you think having some extra packing tape or cheap moving boxes would be nice for having a mini fireworks base to shoot off of in the evening? All you’ve gotta do is break down those cheap moving boxes, set them up as a base, and tape mortar bases to them.

Activities.

Activities make the evening last. You don’t need to go overboard with activities, especially if it’ll break the bank. Just try to get someone to bring a cornhole set and have some extra solo cups sitting around for beer pong and you’re golden. And if someone has a lakehouse to party at? Well, that’s all you’d really need for a memorable 4th of July in order to have fun on the water and in the sun, drink what you want, and grill out by the lake! And don’t forget the tunes. Music is what keeps the party going.

Food and drinks.

Here’s the best suggestion I can give when it comes to food and drinks: overstock your fridge. If you run out, well, things can get boring, people will sober up, and stomachs will begin to growl. Of course, you want to tell your guests to bring their own drinks and contribute to food if needed. But the best thing you can do as a host is overprepare and overstock unless you want to run out of stuff in the middle of the evening/weekend.

Ever think about putting your kids to work to help out around the house but you’re never quite sure where to have them start? Or maybe it’s a slight fear you may have of what chores they can actually handle (especially if they’ve never done chores before)?

Well, there are a handful of cleaning tasks around the house that they can easily handle, you just may not have thought of them initially. The good thing is that a lot of these suggested chores pull the most weight in transforming your home from meh to wow. How’s that possible if they’re easy for your kids to pick up and do in on time, though?

Because these chores are the ones that make the most difference when actually tackled. You’ve just been putting them off for weeks or months because it’s a little extra labor for you. If you happen to spur forth some ingenuity and think about making your life easier with the right preparation, from using random packaging supplies to planning out your time better, you’ll be on the right track.

With that said, let’s dive into a few of my favorites that children won’t even mind if they’re doing it with you.

Cleaning the floors.

My mom had my brother and me do this about once a month. We would start by sweeping the floors, both of us with a broom in hand. This helped to pick up all the hair, dust, dirt, and other granules of who knows what before anything else.

Then, though, was where the magic happened. She would get out two hand towels, one for each of us, and soak them in warm water with some dish detergent. From there, all we did was spread them wide, put a foot at the end of each side of the towel, and then “walk” it around the floors which would scrub it down, yet we never had to get on our knees and inevitably complain about it.

To me, this was genius because it took no time with 2 or 3 people, no one was breaking their back to mop the floors, and it was almost kind of fun for us kids. Sometimes it was easy to place some stripped up packaging supplies (like cardboard that was broken down) beneath our feet but above the wet towels for more traction. The result? Absolutely sparkling floors, something any guest would notice right off the bat as they walked into the house.

Wiping down windows.

Talk about a task that takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes and yet is easy but will make a huge difference. I remember fighting over who got this chore with my brother. We were always wanting to do this first as it was an easier chore, yet mom would always praise the window work more than just about any other chore. Why? Because it’s so noticeably better when there’s no apparent window in front of you. If you can see handprints and smudges, though, it’s easy to notice a dirty window. When all that’s gone? Everything is crystal clear and beautiful.

This past weekend I took a trip back home to pick up my dog from my parents and hang out with them for a day or two at their place. I always forget how much I truly enjoy staying at home and just soaking in the countryside in the small town I grew up in. There’s zero worries, zero effort to just hang out, and a lot of fun and good conversation to be had.

Something that was particularly fun for me was helping my dad set up his outdoor pop up bar.

To give you a bit of context, my parents own two houses with three plots of land (one per house and then a plot between the two). This is all on the outskirts of our small town, so it’s essentially a big open expanse of pasture between their houses.

Well, my dad is always busy constructing something new for their home and property during any hours he’s not at work. This time, he was building structures that would be able to roll out to the field, stand up, and function as a little “bar” of sorts, almost like a tiki bar you’d see on the beach.

While I know he was using a decent amount of packaging supplies just to get things started, a big part of the project was cutting big patches of plywood to make “tables” of sorts for the bar itself and for the two stands to sit at.

Basically, he wants to use two whiskey barrels as the bar’s base, so he’d be able to roll those out to wherever he wants, lay the rectangular piece of plywood on top, and have a little bar. Then, he’d use the two giant rope spools (think of a small plastic spool that has thread around it and magnify that spool by about 200 times) as tables to hold umbrellas and have chairs to sit around them.

Again, I’m not sure what all packaging supplies and tools he used, but it seemed pretty minimal considering the biggest part of it all was just making the table tops and boring holes in two of them for holding up the umbrellas.

Needless to say, once we were done setting things up, it actually looked like a legit little pop up bar with protection from the sun, places to sit down and set your drinks, and even storage for beers so that you wouldn’t have to walk all the way back to the fridge in the garage for more drinks. Talk about a vacation spot within the boundaries of your own home!