Packing Supplies and Solutions

As we enter into our third week of quarantine and no end in sight, schools are starting to close for the school year. This leaves a lot of questions about what will happen with students’ education. Many states have already dismissed state testing for the year. So, some schools are left thinking about how they will fill the gaps for their students.

Some schools already had online, digital learning in place. This program was originally set up for short term days missed–like snow days. But it has actually worked for many schools during this extended recess from school. Teachers can post lessons, videos, and activities online for their students. The students can then ask the teacher questions through the messaging app or work collaboratively with other students on their assignments. While this program has been great for schools that have already implemented this technology, many schools do not have this capability. And it would be almost impossible to roll out during this time and try to teach teachers, students, and parents how the program works.

So what about all the schools we don’t already have online learning in place? This has proven a little more difficult for them. Many teachers were instructed to send their students’ books home with them every evening in the middle of March, just in case. This has allowed teachers to send assignments to parents or students and the students can refer to their textbooks for help. Teachers can assign certain pages and questions in their textbooks to complete after they have read each lesson. This is not ideal learning, but it may be the only options schools have.

The last resort for some school districts have been worksheet packets. The teachers have gone into school and copied packets for each student to be distributed in front of the school building. These packets contain two weeks worth of activities for the core subjects. Distribution worked fine until the rules and restrictions got a little bit tighter. Now, schools are scrambling because the state recommends that no more than 5 people gather at a time. The solution to this is mailing the packets. Teachers have to come in, print the packets, and use packaging supplies to package up the worksheets.

Packaging supplies can add up, so a lot of local businesses have been donating supplies to schools so students can get their packets. The packets also have to be limited because the cost of shipping goes up with every new paper added to the package.

What a weird time to be alive. People are being quarantined to their homes for weeks on end. Thankfully, many jobs can now be done from home because of laptops and instant communication. Unfortunately, laborers, retail workers, and waitressing staff are out of a job until bars and restaurants open again. One thing is for certain, people are going to be spending a lot of time at home now. Might as well get interested in a new hobby.

One trend that has recently resurfaced are CDs, vinyls, and cassette tapes. People really enjoy having their own digital copy of the music rather than just downloading the tunes onto their devices. Especially during a time like this where almost everything is uncertain, people prefer to have physical copies of their favorite music to pass down for generations.

During this time a lot of local CD and vinyl shops have closed their doors. Luckily, they have social media platforms to advertise their product and hopefully sell things online. Some buyers are skeptical from buying their products and having them shipped because they are nervous about their fragile products being broken. CD and vinyl shops understand and respect this concern, and have taken the appropriate steps to ensure the product’s safety.

The shops order packaging supplies that will protect the products from expensive damage. Consumers can feel comfortable ordering their products and be confident that their CD or vinyl will be placed in packaging supplies that can withstand the travel. Vinyls will also be packed in stiffeners to ensure the vinyl will not bend during the shipping process.

Many artists have also released limited CDs and DVDs. While CD and DVD are less likely to bend during shipping, the possibility of breaking is still pretty high. Stores will send the CDs and DVDs in protective sleeves. They could also consider packaging them into specific CD shipping boxes and then into an envelope or small package.

After receiving your package you can really start to enjoy your music on your CD or record player. People can start to broaden their taste in music by maybe purchasing a CD or vinyl that would not previously purchased. We do have a lot of time to get into new music, after all. Once you receive your CD or vinyl, make sure you are storing them responsibly in your collection. Some consumers even keep the shipping boxes their music came in to ensure that it stays safe.

Spring is coming soon, you can fill it in the air, if you try real hard. It won’t be long now and we will be doing our spring cleaning, boxing up all of our winter clothes and winter decor, swapping them out for pastels and greenery with new buds and generally decluttering all around.

Organization is the key to any form of decorating. What I like to do is take a load of packaging supplies and get to boxing things up. From a mind full of ideas to organize, to boxes full of home decor to organize. We start by looking over all the items that we have on hand and we break them down into categories. Whether it’s categories of what we need to do, categories that we only wish we could do, or categories of what we have already done, yet didn’t complete fully.

Of course the need to do categories should be top priority. Things such as boxing up Christmas decorations with packaging supplies needs to be done before spring arrives. Swapping out winter clothes for a few cooler clothing items is also something that needs to be done. After the needs to be done category is completely finished then the next easiest is to tie up all those loose ends on the category of things that have already been completed but yet not fully completed. In other words ask your husband to finish nailing in that one last piece of trim that never got finished when you were installing that new hardwood. It only takes a matter of minutes, yet for some reason we always find a way to put it off entirely too long. And lastly work on organizing the wish you could category. You may not be able to do it all right now but possibly you could do parts right now? So do as much as you can now, and make a list of dates that you hope to have the other parts completed by.

Along with organizing for spring comes cleaning for spring. The easiest that I’ve figured out is to take your spring cleaning one room at a time. The reason this works for me is because I need to see progress. I am motivated by that one room being completely done.

So instead of cleaning out all the closets in your house, then washing all the windows in your house, and finally washing all the glass throughout your house, concentrate on just one room at a time. Clean that one closet, wash only the windows in that one room, mop the floors in that one room, display some new greenery in just that one room and voilà you have completed one entire room! So let that motivate you to move onto the next room, next weekend. Happy spring cleaning all.

When I heard the heartbreaking news of a former coworker losing her 40 year old, only child, to stage 4 pancreatic cancer I knew immediately I had to create a wreath for my friend named Sandy. I worked with Sandy for over 13 years starting in 1985. Sandy loves gardening so I wanted to to make a wreath that she could possibly hang in a quiet spot in her garden. With a little bit of shipping supplies and a lot of love, this piece began coming together.

I’ve often seen these unique wrought iron and wood, angel wings at Hobby Lobby so that was my inspiration. Saturday I picked up two angel wings, along with a starfish and a wrought-iron ring holding three wooded seagulls inside. I plan to attach the angel wings to a huge grapevine wreath then add some soft pink flowers and finish it with the starfish and seagulls as the beach was her daughters most favorite thing. How sad must my friend be, missing her only child, wondering why and longing to hug her daughter just one more time. It’s my hope that this unique wreath will show my heat felt love and my sympathy.

The second Wreath Shoppe project is being donated to the Sunflower Galla, a fundraiser for Miss Holly’s House (a private Christian school that my friends little girls attend.) Rita approached me for donating a wreath this year, since last year’s wreath was a huge hit, bringing in over $150 at the auction. This is a special fund raiser as it would have been Miss Holly’s son’s birthday. Her son was killed in a farming accident when he fell into a full grain bin and suffocated before he could be rescued. His death came at an extremely hard time, because Miss Holly was close to opening her private school and her son was her number one supporter. Miss Holly somehow found the strength to finish the school in honor of her son.

This year’s wreath is a messy, rambling, spring event of the ever palest of pinks and the deepest of purples. It just goes to show how useful shipping supplies can be in putting together beautiful wreaths. Like many of my past Christmas decorations that were tweaked for a different look, this wreath was tweaked from hanging on my son and daughter in-laws front door last year. It was one of my all time favorite creations simply because of its wildflower look, and its rambling vines and twigs. The twigs were tweaked from a wedding event, so they were repurposed for the third time. I still remember gathering the twigs and spray painting them white, with no idea that they would end up on a donation wreath to Miss Holly.

This should catch you up on the latest projections at the Wreath Shoppe, until next time, may you enjoy life to its fullest and may you be blessed beyond anything you could fathom.

Have you ever seen those crazy colored, hippie looking travel vans and buses that seem like they came straight out of the 60s? Whenever I see them I just feel like I’m bound to end up with one at some point in the next 10 years. I’ll have the income to throw at it on the side. I have the resources at my parents’ house to get it done and my dad’s assistance on anything vehicular that I wouldn’t know much about.

It’s an exciting thought to consider, especially as my partner and I move more and more away from a lifestyle that is work based and one that’s more home based. And while I don’t know if it would be possible to get away from the way of life everyone else calls the only way and just live on the go, I do know that I could easily take multiple weeks off to make road trips, go to music festivals, and take it camping. It’s my absolute dream of a vehicle, to be honest, much in the same way that so many other people want super expensive Corvettes.

So what goes into this process?

Make your mark on it.

Definitely where all the wild graphics and colors come into play. If you can personalize your travel bus and make it reflect who you are as a person, you’re doing it right. Remember that you’re doing this for the travel, for the experiences, and for the love of culture and people. This should be a fun design that’s roughshod and creative. Gather whatever packaging supplies you need for the inside of the bus too and you’re good to go.

Comfy sleeping.

Anyone seriously trying to make one of these will make it comfortable for sleeping and relaxing. I suggest that you may as well spend the extra cash to make sure the bed and its support is great. Why be miserable when sleeping at night if you’re going to make this a travel bus? Don’t even think about using some packaging supplies (like cardboard) as slipping under a cushion for your sleeping bag on the floor. Get yourself a nice bed.

Build out a kitchen area.

This is especially important for traveling so that you can save money by cooking on the go instead of eating out all the time. If you’re going to be living out of your bus, you absolutely have to have something to cook with and running water for dishes, cooking, and cleaning your hands. Without these two things, you’ll be stopping so much more frequently than you need to at grocery stores, pit stops, gas stations, restaurants, and campgrounds for what you need.

I’m sure that a lot of people find themselves lost in the sea of social media that has swarmed our lives in such a quick hurry. Considering just 10 years ago social media was nothing like it is today, that shows how much a “thing” can consume a culture or even the world. Social media has, in fact, taken over the world, and it’s the reason so many are confused, angry, annoyed, estranged, and worried about social media.

But on the other side of the coin, people love it. People wouldn’t change a single thing about social media and how it’s taken over our attention more than anything else the world has ever produced in the past handful of decades. Social media has changed our lives for the better, in the eyes of some, by being able to connect with long distance friends and stay in touch with family. It’s created job opportunities via LinkedIn, made people money by being Instagram influencers, and helped candidates win political campaigns on the likes of Facebook. But what may be “beneficial” to some can be seen as harmful or even toxic to others.

It all depends on how you look at all of this social interaction that takes place digitally. If you rewound 30 years, you’d recognize that most people kept their photos stored in cheap moving boxes in their closet or on a bookshelf to access when needed. There was no way to upload photos to your computer and save them to a cloud. It wasn’t possible to pull up any single picture you wanted right away all thanks to advanced storage systems and file organizing. You had to dig around to find what you were looking for, and sometimes photos would be faded or damaged entirely.

So whether you fall in the camp of going back to how things were with your cheap moving boxes full of photos or you simply prefer to keep up with the times and love your digital storage systems, the fact of the matter is that social media is here to stay, and what you choose to do with your time and those applications or websites is up to you.

My suggestion? Look for ways to use these things that can directly impact your life here and now, but don’t spend over an hour a day on the various apps when you could be using that time doing much more important things like hanging out with your friends and family in real time or reading a book that will stick with you a lot longer than a nightly social media feed would.