Three Kinds of Shipping Bags

Posted on May 10, 2016 by Alex Kava

This is the third installment of a three-piece collection about the “three kinds” of packaging and shipping supplies.  The first installment was on shipping boxes, and the second was on packaging tape, and this one is going to be about shipping bags.  You probably didn’t know that there is even such a thing as the “three kinds” rule, and even though it’s not an official designation it has been proven itself to be true after much observation.  The three kinds of shipping bags are: casual, serious, and professional.  Below, I will explain in greater detail the characteristics that make each of these categories distinct from one another

Casual: something that is done without much thought, effort, or concern.  Being casual doesn’t mean that you simply don’t care.  That would be called “disregard” or something equally as fancy, like “disrespectful”.  That is not what I’m talking about when it comes to casual shipping bags.  What I’m talking about is when you aren’t trying to impress someone.  You can wrap stuff up in old grocery bags and never stress out about it.  These are for the times when you are sending something off to close family and friends, of course, and you know that they won’t mind the informal materials.  As a matter of fact, they might even be grateful for some extra plastic grocery bags because they use them to clean out the cat box and tie up extra-dirty diapers in.

Serious: involving or deserving a lot of thought, attention, or work.  If you were to send off your manuscript, which is the same analogy for the other two parts of this trilogy, you probably wouldn’t put it in a recycled bubble mailer from Valentine’s Day that has a sketch of Snoopy on top of his doghouse shooting a heart-tipped arrow at Woodstock.  Any editor or publishing company would throw that in the trash immediately.  If you can’t take yourself seriously, neither can they.

Professional: exhibiting a conscientious and generally businesslike manner.  Shipping bags have a big place in the professional world of packaging and shipping supplies.  They basically make it or break it.  There are all manner of specialty bags that can be used to make sure that the item being shipped is represented in the best possible way.  After all, how an item is packaged is part of the first impression that someone is going to get from a company.  Make sure that items or categorized appropriately in their own little sacks, and don’t use a newspaper bag for sending off jewelry.

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America Comes in Shipping Boxes

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Alex Kava

I read a story once about this girl who leads a pretty messed up life (because how interesting would the book be if she was completely normal, right?), and how when she finally grows out of foster care she becomes an artist.  Her method is to decorate suitcases with paraphernalia that represent all the different stages in her life.  In her case, each suitcase more or less represented each foster home, and each foster home came during a peak season of her adolescence, and also contributed to it.  I thought it was really boring to read about at the time, the description of everything in these suitcases and what everything meant, but later I came to appreciate the ingenuity.

I got to wondering about America, and all of the shipping boxes that have gone out of this country during all of the different times.  It would be a cool museum display to have a bunch of them set up with the contents pouring out of them and set up all around them.  Each one would represent the time that it came from.

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Like the founding of our country.  It would be a wooden crate filled with supplies for gold-mining, all of which wound up being useless when it came to starting a colony.  Or giant containers fitting to the periods of time that they would have come from, full of everything that would have been needed during that particular war.  Muskets and funny-looking hats and candles for the Revolutionary War.  Boots and paper and little sacks of coffee for the Civil War.  Ponchos and cigarettes and magazines for Vietnam.  You could go on and on coming up with what those shipping boxes would have held.

They would have crossed the ocean in the bellies of giant ships that spent months at sea.  Can you imagine spending months at sea?  The thought alone makes me start to freak out a little bit.  Talk about being claustrophobic.  You would literally have no where to go.  They would have been shipped across the country in the beds of wagons or by train.  They would have been dropped out of the sky with parachutes attached to them- giant shipping boxes floating like presents down from the sky.  Even just the many ways that they travelled speaks of the history of the time.  Even just the material that they were made out of would as well.  All of it comes together to speak of the developments, the advancements, the improvisations of people from eras that are so far beyond our imagination.

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And A One and A Two and A Shipping Bags

Posted on April 25, 2016 by Alex Kava

Music is probably one of the greatest things that has probably ever existed.  If you think about it, it has been around for as long as people.  Every single people group revers music in one way, shape or another, and they always have.  I think it’s crazy fascinating to think about the people that invented musical instrument.  I mean, how incredible to have music so in your soul that you developed an entire machine in order to get it out.  Now that’s a miracle, like it or not.

I have always been a major fan of music.  But today I’d like to talk a little bit about shipping bags.  Shipping bags also need their place in the discussion forum.  Okay, I guess this particular topic of conversation will only pertain to a very small group of individuals, whereas music is completely universal.  Perhaps you could consider shipping bags to be “elite”, and not just under-whelming.  There is so much out there that was originally considered under-whelming but then quickly rose in importance and popularity.  Like the peanut, or any number of inventions that were originally thought to be silly and have now become vital contributors to everyday life.

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Like shipping bags.  From the bubble pack to the cardboard one insulated with that stuff that looks like dryer lint.  If a box isn’t necessary for sending something, shipping bags are ready to stand in the gap.  And how convenient is that!  They conform to the shape of what you are sending so much easier, and are therefore so much more spatially and cost effective, too.  Granted, they make for awkward stacking and handling, but that is something for the mail people to worry about.

Maybe you wouldn’t like to talk about shipping bags anymore.  Maybe that’s as far as your interest goes in such a subject.  If that is the case, I wouldn’t blame you.  I would encourage you to give them the respect they are due, and to even call them to mind every now and then in your daily life.  I’m sure you will find that you come across shipping bags so many more times than you think you would.

Now, back to much more universal and stimulating topic of conversation: music.  From the womb to our last moments on earth, as human beings we love music.  Animals don’t seem to care about it one way or another, but a baby can learn to dance before they can learn to walk, and a song will bring someone comfort in the valley of Alzheimer’s.

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My Stories about Stretch Film

Posted on April 16, 2016 by Alex Kava

So, I’ve had a few encounters with stretch film, and I would think they are worthy enough to take a minute to share.  Granted, they aren’t terrifying and horrible like when Frodo gets wrapped up and stabbed in the stomach by the giant spider.  And they aren’t as nightmarish and gruesome as the scenes that Dexter sets up for his victims.  Which I’m glad about.  I’m sure I wouldn’t tell them if I did.  I probably wouldn’t even be able to, I would be too traumatized.  I mean, a spider the size of my garage?  Come on!  There’s no coming back from that.  And forget about Dexter.  There’s certainly no coming back from that, if you catch my North Atlantic drift.

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Anyhow, my own experiences with stretch film have been mild at best, but somehow more than the average person’s, and so here is one of them.  Once upon a time, I was in the military.  Yes, it’s true.  And I’m not very old, but it was already so long ago that I sometimes wonder if it was actually me.  While I was there I worked in a supply shop that ordered new parts and sent off broken ones, for one helicopter squadron in particular.  Now, hazing in all forms is completely normal in the military, and I was primarily, thankfully, the victim of a more friendly sort.

It was more or less that I had about two hundred older brothers, like it or not, but most of them were pretty nice to me.  They didn’t know their own size or strength, and that was problematic every now and then, but overall I had a fabulous military experience, which a lot of people can’t wind up saying.

Well, one day at work the guys came across an extra roll of stretch film, and they took one look at each other and then came for me.  There wasn’t much point in trying to fight it, but I still did, and in between hysterical laughing and just plain hysteria I was completely cocooned in stretch film and then placed against a corner in the wall.  I couldn’t sit, and I had to be careful not to fall.  It was a couple hours before someone found me, and by then the game wasn’t funny anymore, and the guys wound up getting in serious trouble and I was given the whole next day off of work in the attempts of trying to bribe me not to take the issue to a higher-ranked official.  I had no intentions of doing so, but I did enjoy the extra time off.

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Shipping Supplies are Shipping Supplies

Posted on April 15, 2016 by Alex Kava

Isn’t it amazing when something ordinary can become something wonderful, and amazing?  Creativity can open so many doors for so many beautiful things.  If you are a creative person you could probably walk around your house and grab random things and turn them into a fascinating work of art, or an intriguing life hack.  You could probably take a stack of shipping supplies and turn them into a castle.  If you are a compassionate person you could probably probably walk around your house and grab random things and turn them into something that would help somebody else.  You could turn shipping supplies into a care package.

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It’s not really being redundant when we say that shipping supplies are shipping supplies.  Because they are!  All over the world.  It’s how we send food and household items to people in need.  It’s how we pack up blankets and t-shirts and socks and soccer balls and send them to villages high up in the mountains.  It’s how we can give tents and sleeping bags and school supplies and canned goods to areas that have been ravaged by a hurricane or earthquake.

One of my favorite times of the year is when little green boxes with red lids start popping up.  They are “shoeboxes” for Operation Christmas Child.  You can put whatever you want in that little box, anything to bring joy to a child from an impoverished nation.  I always choose the oldest age group, because I think they must be the hardest to shop for, and the most neglected.  It’s so much more fun to shop for babies and toddlers, and even five to eight-year-olds are easier to shop for.  Fun toys and candy are easy to come by.  It starts to get a bit more challenging when you are moving into the pre-teens.

A hand mirror?  A jump rope?  A toothbrush and toothpaste and one of those washrags that comes in a plastic cube and then expands when you get it wet (dude, I’d really like to see how they make those things).  A yoyo.  Chewing gum and sidewalk chalk.  A first aid kit and a sewing kit.  I love doing this.  Throughout the year I collect little trinkets and when December comes I get to dump it all out and remember all the fun stuff and get to choose which boxes they will go in.  I really try to imagine the child that will be opening the box.

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Hitch’s Bin Liners Part 2

Posted on April 4, 2016 by Alex Kava

Sometimes it was hard to be the one in charge of changing out the bin liners.  It was a big responsibility.  If no one was there to take out the trash, and replace the bag, trash would just pile up, and spill out of the cans, and onto the floor.  A mess would grow and consume the entire trash station, and a puddle of brown ooze would begin to spread across the tiles.  It would be a terrible tripping hazard, and maybe some old people would start slipping, and then their slipping would start to turn into a dance, and someone else would join in, and before you knew, everyone in the food court was doing a dance and singing.

Hitch called it his “bin liners” dream, and he liked when it had a happy ending.  Sometimes it didn’t.  Sometimes it involved an ambulance coming.  He was afraid of ambulances.  He had to ride in one once when he was twenty-two and he had a really bad seizure.  He remembered being really afraid, because he knew that ambulance was going to take him to the hospital, and he didn’t like hospitals.  He had spent a lot of time there are as a kid and it always hurt, and it was always loud.  Everyone was always nice, though, and that was good.  Because sometimes a lot of people just weren’t nice.

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After having this dream, his “bin liners” dream, Hitch would go into work the next day very seriously.  HE would pay special attention to staying on task.  Sometimes he would start to feel his mouth going dry, and a sweat beginning to form.  What if he wasn’t going fast enough?  What if the trash bin on the other side of the food court was already over-flowing?  He would try to use some of his like skills in moments like that.  He would say to himself, “It’s okay, Hitch, you will get there soon.

Don’t worry.  It’s okay.  Someone will tell you if it’s overflowing.”  This always made a lot of sense to Hitch, and he wished that he could find a way to incorporate it into his dream, even if it meant he no longer had the dream where it ended with people dancing and smiling and singing.  People always came up to him, sometimes in not a very nice way, to tell him that a certain trash can was beginning to fill up too much.  The public never failed to keep him notified.  Now he just had to find a way to get the public to do this in his dream.

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Hitch’s Bin Liners

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Alex Kava

It was Hitch’s job to remove and replace the full trash bin liners with empty ones.  Every day he got to the mall at eleven o’clock and he worked faithfully until two-thirty, when most of the lunch rush had come and gone.  Annie was there from nine until he took over for her, and then Chuck the janitor took over for him and managed the entire building until it was closing time.  It was a good job, and Hitch was very proud of it.  When he went to club meeting on Saturday afternoons he always had funny or interesting stories to tell his friends.  He told them about the mommys who came and let their kids run around like little wild animals, or the little old ladies who had book club, or the homeless people looking for some relief from the outside.

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Hitch always hated it when something sharp got wedged in the trash the wrong way and then ripped the bin liners.  He tried double bagging for a while but the janitor said it was a waste of resources, so he went back to having to deal with the trouble.  Usually there was a sludge of soda and sauce dripping all down the side and pooling in the bottom of the can.  Over the years, Hitch had learned the tricks of the trade.  He always brought out an extra can so that he could take the dirty one to the back and rinse it out.  He learned his lesson after the first time, when some people walked by and laughed at him for trying to clean it out right in the food court by putting his body halfway in.

By the time Hitch made his way all the way around the food court, he usually had only a few minutes to chat with some regulars before having to go all the way around again.  When it was lunchtime it didn’t take long for the trash to start overflowing.  People came from the many office buildings in the surrounding area, and the mall’s food court offered many options.  Hitch’s favorite was Dragon King II.  He got fried rice for lunch every single day.  It was really great that he was able to spend his own money that he earned on his own lunch to eat during his own break.  After he was done eating every single grain of sticky, savory rice he would go back to his job, removing and replacing the full bin liners with empty ones.

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How to Find Discount Packaging and Shipping Supplies

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Alex Kava

Everyone knows that discount packaging and shipping supplies are hard to come by.  And if you didn’t know than you are either under the age of seventeen and have never moved, or you are over the age of eighty and haven’t moved since the fifties.  Otherwise, if you’ve played the moving game in any capacity whatsoever you know what I’m talking about.

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There are a couple things to keep an eye out for, though, to ensure that you are legitimately getting the best bang for your buck, and not the the other way around:

  • First and foremost, the internet. For all of you that hate internet shopping, if you want discount packaging and shipping supplies this is something you are going to have to make an exception for.  UHaul doesn’t have a Black Friday sale.  If you are buying your supplies from an actual shipping or department store you are not getting a discount because they are A) going to upcharge to cover the cost of getting it all shipped and unloaded and stocked, and B) going to upcharge on top of that because that is simply what they do.
  • The right kind of website. So yes, the internet is where you are going to find the best deal, but I’m not even talking about Amazon Prime.  As a matter of fact, stay away from Amazon entirely for this one.  You are looking for actual websites that are certified by the Better Business Bureau and actually specialize in the product they are selling.  If you stumble across a website that doesn’t offer literally hundreds of options for the same thing, that is a sign it’s not legit.
  • Buy bulk. This is where the discount part comes in.  Sure, there is an automatic discount for going right to the source and cutting out the middle man (or one of them), but buying bulk is really where you wind up saving your money, and that is pretty much a fact from bread flour to diapers.
  • Buy a bundle. Sometimes these websites offer a moving bundle, if you are looking to move, complete with all of the random things that you will find yourself needing but probably forgetting.  That is, if they are a website that understands hundreds of options of the same item can be really overwhelming for the average individual…

And voila!  There you have it.  Some things to look for when trying to find discount packaging and shipping supplies.  If you don’t wind up paying drastically less by following these tips than I’m a vermicious knid.

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You Don’t Have to Break the Bank on Shipping Supplies

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Alex Kava

Random, fun fact of the day: I’m sure most of you know this already, although I don’t particularly remember learning this in school, but the first person in space was a Russian man named Yuri Gagarin.  Unfortunately, he died in a plane crash when he was just thirty-four years old.

On that depressing note, let’s talk about shipping supplies.

What about shipping supplies?  Well, that’s what I want to talk about.  When I say “shipping supplies” I’m sure certain things come to mind: boxes, tape, bubble wrap, stamps, envelopes, paper, mailmen, UPS trucks, horseback riding… the train of thought starts to trail off after a while as the break-offs become more and more, and further and further from the starting point.

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I think it’s important to remember that we don’t have to feel confined to a status quo about shipping supplies.  Unless, of course, you are in the business of shipping things.  Then I would absolutely suggest using fresh, strong products.  I would even say that a custom gift should be included when you send something off.  For example, I ordered a book from an online seller, and when I got the package in the mail it also came with one of those reusable bags with the company’s logo on it.  I thought that was such a good idea!  I love reusable bags, and now I buy from that company all the time.  They only sent me one the first time I ordered through them, but that’s okay.  I don’t need a surplus.  It was the initiative that counted for me.

As for the casual “shipper” of items, you don’t have to break the bank.  I get it, we like to think that we have an image to maintain, and if it’s that big of a deal to you then, by all means, buy the brown paper and the twine and wrap that baby up like it’s a photo prop for a Crate and Barrel catalogue.  If you are like the rest of us, consider some other options.  Balled up newspaper makes great stuffing.  And, if you are like most of us and don’t get the newspaper anymore, balled up scrap mail, or even fluffed up grocery bags.  How about an old, crappy towel?  Or a cardboard box cut into strips and rolled up?  It’s easy to get creative with stuff around the house when you are trying to save some money.  I would probably draw the line at sand, or something like that, though…

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The Benefits of Using Stretch Film Wrap

Posted on March 10, 2016 by Alex Kava

When it comes to wrapping your pallet, you want to do so wisely. If this process has not been carefully executed, the contents of your pallet might never end up where they are supposed to. In this event, it will cost you time and money that should have never been spent. When it comes to wrapping your pallets in an effective manner, it is best that a high quality stretch film wrap is used.

Stretch film wrap from packagingsupplies.com is beneficial for a number of reasons. First and foremost: this stretch film wrap has been tested in order to provide the best stretch, cling, puncture resistance, and clarity. It is good to know you are getting the best stretch and cling for your buck, and also that it will not be punctured during its journey. Last but not least, being able to see what is inside the pallet is beneficial to the folks who are in charge of unloading trucks and distributing items where they need to go.

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At PackagingSupplies.com you can also purchase your stretch film wrap in three different roll widths and five different film thicknesses measured in gauges. The way this is done, you are wondering? The larger the gage, the thicker the film thickness. Having the option to select the size of wrap will help you to properly wrap your pallets in the most effective manner. Having a larger roll width for a larger pallet, for example, will keep you from using excess. If you are trying to wrap a large pallet with a smaller roll width, you will end up using the entire roll just by getting it to cover the entire pallet properly. Ain’t nobody got time for wasted film wrap.

A final benefit of using stretch film wrap, especially from this site, is that it is the softest, quietest, and most flexible film on the market. If you happen to be the lucky guy that gets to wrap pallets all day, you can understand why this would be beneficial. No more earplugs and moisturizing cream required, and you won’t be sweating by the time the process is through.

Oops, we lied. Not done yet! The final benefit and good news from shopping from PackagingSupplies.com for your stretch film wrap needs? It is extremely inexpensive! Rolls start at just $10.85 and can be ordered in up to 8+ counts.

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