Stretch Film and Magic Carpet Rides

Posted on February 27, 2016 by Alex Kava

You might be thinking that there is not much that can be said about stretch film. And now you might be thinking that I would rebut that thought by saying, “You would be wrong.” Except that you would be wrong, because that’s not what I’m going to say. I’m going to say that you would be right. Because it would be right! There really isn’t that much to say about stretch film whatsoever. Unless you are a salesperson of stretch film. Of which I am not. I am just a lowly content writer.

You know something that there is a lot to say about? Magic carpet rides. And that’s a scientific fact. Granted, magic carpet rides may not be scientific in themselves, but it’s a scientific fact that there is a lot to be said about them, whether or not they are real. I’m willing to bet that there are at least two people out there who testify that magic carpet rides are most certainly real, and you probably know who I’m talking about, but I’m still sworn to secrecy and there’s nothing I can do about that but maintain by honor.

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I, for one, would immediately trade in my ten-year-old Focus Focus for a magic carpet. How much more amazing would it be. Car(pet) crashes, for one, would cease to be so incredibly terrifying because the damage would be minimal at all times and in all situations. If you wear a helmet you are set even better. You probably wouldn’t even have to go to the hospital because you would just know that your only problem was a little whiplash and rugburn.

I doubt that magic carpet rides are really as romantic as they are depicted in movies and literature, though. I don’t see how it’s possible at all to sit cross legged on a carpet that is whizzing and rolling around, unless it is actually not doing those things. You would be falling over at single movement with nothing to hold onto but each other, which could get real awkward real fast. In real life you would wind up needing to lay on your stomach, probably. Or you could probably lay on your back, but I imagine it would be really easy to get carpet sick like that. And if you’ve seen someone after they get out of a convertible, that’s what it’s going to be like after a magic carpet ride. You are going to need to wear a trench coat, scarf, hat and goggles, and be lying down. So, yeah, not romantic. But probably still more romantic than stretch film.

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What Packaging and Shipping Supplies Have to Do with Wheel of Fortune

Posted on February 18, 2016 by Alex Kava

I was watching Wheel of Fortune a couple weeks ago and it was time for the final puzzle. I’m pretty sure the unlucky contestants have less than a minute to try and figure out what it is, after they’ve guessed all their letters and had them filled in. Maybe it’s even thirty seconds or less.

Whatever the case, it’s basically no time whatsoever to figure out what the phrase is unless you are some sort of genius, which most of us are not. So most of us are not going to go home with the all-expenses-paid trip to Disneyworld for four, or the brand new Escalade. We will take our shiny new set of pots and pans and remember that we were “this close” every single stinking time we use them… Or the basketball hoop that gets set up in the driveway that no one ever uses because there is nobody in the house between the ages of nine and twenty-two. Perhaps this is coming across a little too personal, and you might think that none of this has anything to do with packaging and shipping supplies. Just wait.

On this particular night the final puzzle was two long lines, and dotted with ‘s’, ‘I’ and ‘e’. The part that kept throwing me off was how the second word ended in in ‘lies’, which signifies a plural but that you still wind up seeing only very rarely. I couldn’t get it. The most ridiculous things kept popping up in my head: prator willies, travelling something, apologizing profusely… It was starting to get really annoying, the nonsense that just kept popping up in my brain.

You will never guess what the final phrase wound up being. It was “packaging supplies”. Said what? I was dumbfounded. Just dumbfounded, and also really deeply ashamed. I am in the business of packaging and shipping supplies (well, not really, but I write about them almost every day), and the fact that it didn’t even cross my mind was really kind of shocking and appalling. I mean, how could I have not looked at that and started jumping up and down because I knew what it was?

I could have gone on that show and blown everyone away and they would have all been like, “What? How would she have ever known to guess that?” and then I might find myself being stalked and then kidnapped and interrogated about how I cheated, but I would tell stories about my life and how it was freakishly ironic that I know packaging and shipping supplies. If it had been anyone else… But that time, that time it was me, and I won the trip to Disneyworld. I’m so freaking excited…

 

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Cheap Moving Boxes and Cheap Chinese

Posted on February 11, 2016 by Alex Kava

When I think of college I think of cheap moving boxes and cheap Chinese. I was pretty young when I left home, just barely seventeen. To my untrained mind “cheap” was the answer to everything. I had come to understand that when something was cheap you got more and at less of a price, which didn’t make sense, but perhaps the rest of the world just hadn’t figured it out yet. So that’s how it went for me. The off brand all the way. Granted, I still don’t buy much name brand stuff as an adult, married and with a family. Unless we are talking about shells and cheese. I have yet to find an off brand that beats Velveeta, but I think you have to like Velveeta in the first place, which many people do not.

There is a different between “off brand” and “way off brand” (although I must clarify that none of this applies to cheap moving boxes or cheap Chinese). Usually on the shelf you will see the name brand item, take Fruit Loops for example. Next to them will be the store brand (off brand choice number one), and they are probably calling it something like Fruit Rounds. Basically as close as they can get to the real deal.

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Then, off to the side, are the bags of the way off brand, and the only name they can afford to mass produce is Os. Stay away from the Os, man. There is probably not more than three ingredients in those things, and two of them are bound to be sugars. Did I mention that there is something that far exceeds the name brand? I don’t know what this brand would be called, but I think “organic” does the trick. Usually these brands are in their own section, so they don’t have to associate with the lowers classes, and their names are usually tribal and sympathetic: Wallabee Planet Happiness, The Crunchies that Love the Rainforest, Sans Gluten Wafer Goodness… you get the point.

Well, I stayed away from all brands unless the product was so cheap you could see through the plastic silverware and the thread count was no more than, like, 30 or 40. Of course as I grew older I also outgrew the naivety that cheap means best. Let’s just say that I “upgraded”. But two things that never need to be upgraded? Cheap moving boxes and cheap Chinese. They will never let you down, no matter how little you are paying.

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Shipping Boxes Snafu

Posted on February 3, 2016 by Alex Kava

I worked in the shipping industry for most of my life. I started out on the docks, and then trains, and then eventually I retired for a truck company. It was an interesting life, to be sure, even though it might not sound like it. All day every day I was loading and unloading shipping boxes, and I would often wonder about what was inside of them. Well, one day I got the answer to my question, and never again did I care to know!

I will tell you what happened. I woke up one morning just as if it was every other morning. It was early, so it was still dark, and it was damp with the approaching spring. I kissed my children as they lay asleep in their beds, I filled my thermos with coffee, and I got in my car to go pick up my truck.

Well, something terrible happened when I got to the warehouse. As usual, shipping boxes were piled from floor to ceiling, and I went to my section. I loaded up the forklift and began to drive towards my truck, which was sitting and waiting for me with the back wide open. Well, I’m still not quite sure what I saw, but I swear it was a ghost. All the same, I reflexively jerked the wheel and the forklift responded accordingly: the entire pallet of shipping boxes spilling all over the floor.

I sat in silence for an extended period of time, just trying to figure out what to do. There was stuff all over the place. Many of the boxes had split open and the contents were mixing. The only thing I could think of was trying to put it all back, even though I didn’t know what boxes anything belonged in.

Did the pillows go to A. Benson or Granny Smith? It seemed like Granny Smith might need them, so I put them in her box. Did the bag of dog food go to the Johnsons or to Dave With-A-Crazy-Last-Name? Since “Johnsons” was plural I envisioned a family and decided they probably had a dog and so I packaged up the dog food for them. Lizzie Blunt got a set of books, and Bobby Truman got the train set. I hoped that Bobby was the nickname for a little boy, and not a grown man, or he would probably be disappointed. It took me hours, and I probably sweat five pounds off from sheer stress.

I made my deliveries that day like normal, and dropped my truck off when it was done. But I never went back there. I couldn’t bear the shame of the calls that would come pouring in, and I never wanted to see that ghost again.

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Nightmares and Packaging Tape

Posted on January 29, 2016 by Alex Kava

To this day, the sound of packaging tape makes me break into a sweat and my mouth dry up. I get chills and goosebumps on top of those chills and I begin to think that this might actually be the time that I throw up. Do you know what I’m talking about? The sound of packaging tape? It’s when someone starts pulling away a length of the roll, and it’s that screaming tear of a sound. That rip.

My wrists start to tingle and itch, and my ankles and knees begin to feel swollen and hot. Before it happened I never knew how many places really used packaging tape out in the wide open for everyone to hear. In Target, representatives are taping together pieces of a broken toy to be returned to the manufacturer as defective. They don’t know that it reminds me of the worst day of my life: blackness but sound, outside of the magnificent pounding in my head the first thing I hear is that long, screaming tear; then the heat of the adhesive on my skin as my wrists and ankles are bound, then my knees.

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A washrag over my mouth and then a strip of tape over that too. Going out to eat, some manager is taping off the doorjambs so that someone can paint. Suddenly, I feel like I’m choking on my food, but at the same time I’m remembering how I didn’t eat for so long, only the lint from the rag tickling my throat and the coughing and gagging for hours. I would have never thought that something so simple, such an every-day item, could have changed my life the way it did.

I’m sure so many people who have gone through the same thing agree. I heard once about a woman whose kidnapper drank soda, and to this day she can’t be near the stuff. She can smell it a mile away, she swears. Or the guy who can’t be around dogs, because all day every day he listened to the mongrels barking while he was locked away in the dungeon of a basement. I often wonder when the panic will subside. When the normalcy of life, over an extended period of time, will wear down the intensity and sharpness of the terrible memories, like the way the movement of the ocean against sand wears down the edges of glass. It’s still glass, but it’s sea glass now, foggy and smooth instead of clear and sharp.

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Convenient Ways to Recycle Plastic Shipping Bags

Posted on January 21, 2016 by Alex Kava

Every time something comes in the mail there winds up being a lot of trash left over from the packaging and shipping supplies. Granted, I want what I ordered to be well protected so that it can get from the supplier to me without sustaining any damage, and we all know that the delivery people are not so much concerned with “this side up” and “fragile”.

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Therefore, it stands to reason that what I ordered needs to be carefully and securely wrapped. Even if the delivery people are the most gentle individuals on the planet, the elements of nature are still at work, and freak accidents do not discriminate. So of course I want my order to be protected in plastic shipping bags before it’s put in a box. The question is: what do I do with the plastic shipping bags when its all said and done? The boxes are easy enough. We all have plenty of uses for boxes.

My mother used to never throw away a box. She had amassed an enormous collection under her basement stairs, of all shapes and sizes. Literally. These days I save all boxes to use as kindling for bonfires, or let the kids destroy them. A good box will keep a child occupied for hours, and I will take that every chance I get. But not so with the plastic shipping bags. We certainly can’t allow the kids to play with those.

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And yet, there has to be some way to recycle them. What a waste to just toss them in the trash. Here is a short list of a few different ideas:

  • The adhesive back reclosable bags, the ones which are stuck to the front of the box and hold the packaging slip, I reuse and tape to the front of my own storage boxes. I mark the contents of the box on an index card and put the index card in the clear baggie.
  • The plastic merchandise bags have many uses, and I’m sure those are obvious enough to come up with on your own.
  • I use any and all bubble bags come Christmas time to wrap ornaments and fragile Christmas decorations in.

These are just a couple of ideas, but hopefully I have gotten the ball rolling for you to be able to come up with some of your own. While most plastic shipping bags are designed with a specific purpose in mind, they can still be recycled and put to use around the household.

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Multiple Uses for Bin Liners

Posted on January 14, 2016 by Alex Kava

I decided to start a compost pile. That is your fair warning that this will simultaneously be a post about bins and bin liners and composting, and ultimately how they all tie together. Now, I started composting because I want to start a garden, and I have heard that compost is the way to really make the plants thrive and get the most, and best, produce.

Naturally, I had to do a little research on how it all works. Like every good Westernized individual, I spent a decent amount of time on the internet: Wikipedia, Pinterest, Yahoo Answers… You know the drill. When I felt that I had amassed enough knowledge, I began with the first step. Now, you may think that the first step has to do with actually beginning to acquire compost, but that is not the case. It actually has to do with the proper container, known as a compost bin.

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My neighbor growing up used to throw all of her compost in a spot in her backyard, and a lot of people still do that. Or you can go the route of the bin. My in-laws use a fifty-gallon rainwater barrel, turned on it’s side, suspended between two posts so that you can spin it around. Apparently spinning it around (i.e. keeping the compost moving, which is more or less just introducing air) is what you want to do. At this point I should probably mention that the three things you need to make compost are biodegradable trash, air, and moisture.

Also the temperature has to be pretty high, which is why a bin is the better option when dealing with food waste. Here is where it gets really interesting, because apparently there is some serious chemistry involved in all of this. It depends on the types of plants you are growing: certain plants respond better to certain amounts of nitrogen and stuff like that, so you can separate your waste in groups based on this.

I got a couple of different bins, and decided to use the compostable bin liners with them so that the bins weren’t getting gross all the time and producing some nasty smells and juices. I put coffee grounds in one of them exclusively for higher nitrogen. I put meat in a separate one because it takes meat longer to break down, and it also requires a higher temperature.

Then I just scrape all of our other food waste into each one so that they can continue to produce evenly. Before too long: voila! The richest, healthiest, blackest homemade dirt you could ever imagine.

 

 

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Even More Hidden Benefits of Stretch Film

Posted on January 12, 2016 by Alex Kava

Consider this scenario: a little boy gets accidentally left home when the rest of his family leaves for vacation, and a couple of lowlifes decide to rob his house because he doesn’t have anyone there to help him or make them stop. Well, it turns out that this kid is incredibly talented in the art of self-preservation, and he completely booby-traps the home with some seriously genius inventions. One of them includes covering a doorway in stretch film, and then smearing the stretch film with glue. So that when Lowlife Number One tries to go through the doorway, which he assumes to be free and clear, he winds up walking right into the invisible wall and getting covered with sticky goo. Add a snowstorm of feathers and there isn’t too much left that the guys can withstand.

Okay, so that’s obviously from Home Alone, but it needs to be mentioned. Because I’m about to get into even more hidden benefits of stretch film, and by benefits I mean pranks. That is, pranks which can be accomplished using stretch film. I already mentioned how a band of young adult renegades (aka teenagers), all employed at the same restaurant, used one of the rolls of stretch film to wrap their manager’s car. It took the poor man about two hours to saw through the stuff using a Swiss army knife and a set of keys. This is not the only amazing prank, although it is definitely the largest and probably the best.

You’ve got the booby-trapped doorway, which doesn’t even need to include the whole glue and feathers situation. It’s good enough watching every great uncle and spoiled cousin flatten against it, their faces sliding all over the surface as they struggle to comprehend what is happening. This particular prank is usually makes up a decent percentage of the material sent to America’s Funniest Home Videos.

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Another one, that I have never attempted and probably never will, and that I don’t even necessarily recommend but that many people swear by, is the one where you cover the toilet in stretch film. You can probably get the basic idea and therefore surmise why I think it goes under the category of “bad calls”. Basically, someone attempts to utilize the facilities and then begins to wonder at the mess growing all over the floor. I could personally laugh off the first two and not this last one, so make sure your mark is a good sport for sure. And, from now on, beware of stretch film!

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Custom Packaging Tape for the Home

Posted on January 7, 2016 by Alex Kava

Do not be misled into thinking that custom packaging tape has no place in your home. In fact, it has many places, and I will prove it to you. You don’t have to be a small business, or a business of any kind, to benefit from some specific types of tape (otherwise known as custom packaging tape). Of course there’s regular, clear packing tape, which is useful for when you actual need to package something.

Custom Packaging Tape

I keep this kind in my glovebox for when I need to mail out a box and don’t want to buy a new, over-priced roll on site every single time. Electrical tape is useful for managing the tangles of cords that usually exist behind entertainment systems and underneath desks. I had a friend who used to use old bread bag ties for her, but that quickly developed into a choking hazard when she began to have kids. She was the one that got me started using the electrical tape. It’s easy to remove if you need to switch something around, and doesn’t leave a sticky residue behind.

Custom Packaging Tape

I even use it to tape cords to the legs of my desk, or onto the wall, and I don’t have to worry about it destroying anything. Perhaps the custom packaging tape that I have become the most fond of is called flatback tape. I don’t know what “flatback” has to do with anything, but this kind of tape is made from brown kraft paper and, I have found, just so happens to be the best thing to label storage containers with . This is because it can withstand extreme temperatures and even humidity very well. I use the attic for storage, or the garage, and neither one of those locations is climate controlled.

Custom Packaging Tape

As a matter of fact, it gets so humid where we live that it isn’t uncommon for surfaces to be damp to the touch. I just put a little strip on each side of the box, mark it with a sharpie, and am confident that the label will still be there the next time I need to drag the box out.

Regular masking tape just slips right off when it gets damp, and duct tape melts and shrinks when it’s too hot. Flatback tape has been the perfect solution, and it can easily be ordered online. The best part is that these are just a few examples of custom packaging tape that can be used in the home.

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Bin Liners for Use in the Home

Posted on January 6, 2016 by Alex Kava

You probably deal with domestic type bin liners on a regular basis. This style is most commonly seen as trash bags. However, a simple definition of the product would describe it something like this: a bag used to line the inside of a container. It turns out that a bin could be just about anything that hold something.

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If you look up “bin liners” on the internet many different options will pop up. You will find that garbage bags are the most common hit, but that there are also compostable bags for compost bins. I think this is a very clever idea. Line the compost bin with a biodegradable liner and all you have to do is throw the bag on the compost pile and not have to worry about a bin covered in muck and ooze, and attracting God knows how many varmints.

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They make ones for larger compost bins that you would keep outside, or they even make ones for a cute little compost bin that can sit on your kitchen counter. Either way, it’s a good idea. I also discovered a nifty little product that lines the bins and shelves in the refrigerator, meant to make fruits and vegetables last longer. This would be a nice thing to utilize. I once picked up a cucumber that looked completely normal and it literally exploded in my hand like a water balloon. It was one the weirdest things that has ever happened to me, and I am not ashamed to admit that I stood there in shock and awe for a good many seconds.

Bin Liners

I doubt that would have happened if I had used fridge bin liners. My cousin also told me how she once ate a peach and when she got down to the pit she watched a spider crawl out from it. How unnerving. To be eating the peach, all the while with the spider chilling in there. That probably wouldn’t have happened with a fridge bin liner (actually, this is called a split pit, and it just happens in nature, but it’s a cool story about fruit and I wanted to tell it while we were on the topic). Whatever the case, we always keep two types of bin liners on hand at home. One type is strictly for lining our garbage can, the other type are heavy-duty for throwing away sharp and heavy things. It’s convenient to have a variety.

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