Packing Supplies and Solutions

If you find yourself leaving your place of residence for the first time then you are in for a surprise.  Lots of things you have probably never thought of will soon become very important.  What sort of things am I talking about? Well things like, costs for insurance on the rental truck.  Extra tape you may need for the boxes that started to bend and break.  You may also need to go out and purchase cardboard boxes in order to pack your things up.  These little things all take time and also money. 

I have moved at least 10 times in my life for all types of various reasons and I have moved during different aspects of my life as well.  The differences between moving young, at college, moving into a home and moving from one home to another all have different aspects to them.  It also means you may be adding different types of things to the list of moving.  So let’s go over just a few tips on moving out for the first time.

First things first, congratulations on moving to a new location.  Even if you are moving for a sad reason, take this time to realize that a new start is about to occur.  It can be negative if you let it, but it can be very positive because you get to start someplace new and start over in a way.  Now that is just exciting.

The next thing to do is think about moving all your things and finding out how much you have.  This is pretty easy and I like to get a few cheap moving boxes and compare the sizes and think about how many I would need to get my things from one place to another.  This is called planning, and it also help you know how many cheap moving boxes you may need to actually move or purchase.  I like to ask people for old boxes or even companies for boxes so I don’t have to pay for them, but there is a benefit to getting brand new corrugated boxes. 

This is that they are usually stronger and less likely to bend or tear.  I have hurt my back before due to a box bending and the weight shifting while I was carrying it.  This caused a muscle in my back to pull and that was certainly not fun.  New boxes eliminate this issue usually and can be worth the cost of purchasing if that is what may happen. So happy moving!

One task I found that really taught me many lessons was the process of actually creating a warehouse.  This was not simply making the building but taking a completely full area and turning it into a useable, working, productive business section.  This was a very complicated and yet overly simple process that took time.  This was originally at a company that sold old surplus gear and had stored 5 decades of old military gear in piles and massive cheap moving boxes. 

When I first was tasked with taking a several thousand square foot room stacked to the ceiling with gear and making it a usable warehouse I had my doubts it could be done well.  The process took a long time because hidden in every pile was simply money.  All the gear could technically be sold and a profit made on all of it.  Literally everything in the room was money that was sitting there.  The first step was to actually plan out the idea of an end game.  We wanted to create a working moveable shipping area and have a storage area for not only all the old inventory but also the new inventory the store purchased on a daily basis.  

This meant first sorting the thousands upon thousands of items in the warehouse.  This was a task I put multiple hourly workers on every single day.  We created systems for going through each pile and sorting the gear.  Each time we had enough gear to fill a box of the same items we would label and store that box in a corner.  The process took about a year to sort through all the gear.  We used cheap moving boxes to stack all the gear up and ended up throwing out hundreds of square feet of gear that simply could not be sold.  Some things are too far deteriorated or not safe to sell and thus they were dumped.  Each week we filled a dumpster full of gear for a year and then stored whatever was left.  In the end we cleared enough space to begin construction.

The next phase was to create storage for each of the items we needed so we hand built shelves that reached the top of the ceiling and stored the average size boxes we were using. After each shelf was built we would then move the boxes from one corner onto it and then build the next shelf where the old boxes were.  THis process continued until the end when it was turned into a beautiful working warehouse.

This year has brought on many thoughts that would not normally be brought to mind.  The Covid 19 pandemic has changed our entier way of life in the United States and most likely the world as a whole.  Our economies have in many inteses been shut down temporarily.  Way of providing certain products have actually been changed entirely.  The ability to go to a store and pick up items has been limited and people are now purchasing more and more online.  This has brought the use of cardboard to an all time high. I myself have a garage full of cheap moving boxes now due to all the excess items I have ordered.  They have all arrived in oversized cardboard boxes. So I had wondered where these lovely cheep moving boxes originated from.  When was cardboard created and where was is created. 

After a quick search I have discovered that cardboard began its life in China.  It began as taking thick amounts of paper and smashing it together to create packaging material.  This was not just a hundred years ago but back in the 17th century. It has a long lasting history which dates back longer than I believed it would.  Now it is known as the most frequently used packaging material in the world and has been of rover a century. It has been used for most retail and wholesale items which all usually have a component of cardboard in them.  It is amazing to note that it took Europe 200 years to start using it after it was created in China.  This is most likely due to the lack of simple transportation back in those days. 

Now cardboard was not actually called cardboard until recently.  It’s first actual mention in history by that title is in 1848.  The novel, “ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall written by Anne Bronte was the first ever to write about it.  Her book is now a part of history for being the first to ever mention the name cardboard.  It was not till the 19th century that cardboard became a world wide phenomenon. 

It was discovered that it could be easily molded into specific shapes and that it had the capability to hold a lot of weight for its own mass.  Hence it became more economical to make packaging supplies out of cardboard due to its qualities.  Now it is commercially one of the most important products used and will most likely be for the foreseeable future.