When it comes to cardboard boxes, that really is the question: to keep, or not to keep. It it’s a coffee maker box, probably not to keep. If It’s a box from Amazon, definitely keep. Those are always really good boxes. If it’s from Amazon Prime, anyway. Independent sellers often skimp on their packaging and shipping supplies.
If I get a piece of jewelry, I admit that I keep the box. And you want to know what? I always reuse them! Just last week I had my kids make some cute little ornaments for their grandparents for Christmas, and I used those jewelry boxes to wrap them in. Now they are someone else’s problem, wink wink. Some things don’t even qualify for the question, like the cardboard boxes that toys come in. I mean, technically they are cardboard boxes, but they are more or less scraps of paper by the time you manage to get the toy out.
Therefore, not to keep. Diaper boxes? Absolutely keep! And any large box. Any at all. We got a new toilet, and we kept that box. I have been able to hang onto boxes that size for months at a time, the kids using them for something or other. At one point, we had so many boxes that we were able to build a wall out of them and the kids had the greatest time of their lives crashing through it.
Consider my mother. When it came to cardboard boxes she really had a problem. The entire space beneath her stairs was filled, top to bottom, with boxes. I mean, literally every kind of box. She was absolutely OCD when it came to cardboard boxes. If something came in a box, she would take the box down under the stairs and either find a box it could fit into or find other boxes that could fit into it.
Thus, she had successfully packed together hundreds of boxes. Like some people that can’t bear to throw away food because they didn’t have enough growing up, she couldn’t bear to throw away a box- although this was certainly not bred from some sort of dire need as a child. That being said, she always had a box if you needed one! And you could rest assured that whatever she gave you for Christmas was not the actual picture on the box, although sometimes you may have liked it to have been.
Like that one time she asked for the neighbor’s box that their new blu ray player came in… Man, she could have at least scribbled all over it with a Sharpie or something…
