Taking Up Space

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Christmas is over, all the gifts are unwrapped, and if your anything like me, you have a pile of boxes sitting in your garage just taking up space.

This not only looks terrible, but can also be extremely dangerous and detrimental to your survival plan.

Many people keep the vast majority of their survival supplies in their garage and if your garage is cluttered and otherwise innaccessible, you will lose a lot of time if you have to evacuate your home.

Having all that clutter around makes it much more likely that you will trip and injure yourself.  Cardboard and paper are also a major fire hazard as they will take a spark easily, burn hot, and fast.

It is extremely important to keep your garage and any working space uncluttered and in proper order.

But the holidays often leave our trash bins over flowing and require multiple trips in order to get rid of all of that excess packaging.

So what are we to do with all of this cardboard?

The first step you want to take is to make sure that you have all of the boxes properly broken down.  Cut all of the tape,fold the boxes flat, and stack them  in  like sized piles.  Once all of the boxes are broken down and stacked you can tie them off with twine in order to keep them  neat and ordered.

This will drastically reduce the amount of floor space that is taken up and make them much easier to transport.

Your garage should now be a bit more manageable than before.

Unfortunately this still leaves you with more boxes than could possibly fit in a single trash bin.

Before you make a midnight run to a business dumpster ( which is illegal anyway) or take a trip to the city dump, you may want to consider these options:

1. Place the smaller boxes in a plastic storage tub and store them in the attic or an out of the way corner.  The plastic tub will keep insects and rodents from making a home in the card board ( spiders just love the stuff for some reason) and will also keep it from getting wet which would make it unusable.

These smaller boxes can be used the following year for gift wrapping, which will save you a ton of money.   I would also store any left over gift bags  in the tub to keep them all together. Just be sure that the tub is clearly labeled.

2. If you find that most of your boxes fit into the “standard shipping” size category, you may want to try finding a business that buys used boxes.  EcoBox is a chain that I use to offload any excess boxes.  They don’t give you much and they don’t take all box sizes but if you are going to be tossing them anyway, you might as well make a little extra cash on them.

3. Compost them. Cardboard boxes make great compost! The key to using it in your compost pile is to make sure that it is broken down into small pieces. The smaller the pieces the quicker it will compost. Also, soaking the cardboard in water with a bit of liquid detergent will help to speed up the decomposition process.

4.  Add them to your survival supplies.  Cardboard is a great fire starter especially corrugated card board.  It doesn’t take much to set it alight and the corrugation increase the airflow allowing it to burn very hot and very quickly.  Keep a container of thinly cut cardboard strips in a dry box  with waterproof matches to make an emergency fire kit.  As a tip you can dip the strips into wax to make them burn slower, hopefully giving you the time you need to get a roaring fire started.

5. If all else fails recycle it.  Cardboard makes up roughly 31% of all landfill waste.  So if you have a recycle bin use it, even it if takes a few weeks to fully rid yourself of it.  Also look at grocery stores near you  as many of them have public use recycle bins on site.

Can you think of anything else that you can use your left over gift packaging for?

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7 Comments

1. 

   David Ozanne

   at

   You can also check with local charities. I give all my paper and cardboard to the Union Gospel Mission and they sell it to support the work they do.

   Reply
2. 

   Linda

   at

   We shred all our receipts, old bills, used checkbooks (yes we still use those)etc. We till that into the veggie garden in the summer and fall. We save the cardboard to spread on the ground around the plants to cut down on weeds. The cardboard does need to be weighted down. It eventually will break down and we can till that into the garden also. We save the shredded stuff in plastic bags until time to till up the garden. Sometimes we use it under the regular mulch in the flower and shrub beds too. We ask for paper sacks whenever we shop someplace that offers them. Those can be used for our grandkids to draw and color on then reused to wrap their and their parents Christmas gifts.

   Reply
3. 

   JJM

   at

   Our elementary school has several outdoor recycle bins that we visit a few times each year. Still guilty of trashing much paper & cardboard.
   Also, properly laid and secured down, newspaper and cardboard make excellant garden mulch/weed barrier.

   Reply
4. 

   chris g

   at

   Go to the library. Borrow the book “Lasagna Gardening.” You can use your shipping paper or cardboard boxes to start a garden bed project. We also use newspaper, shredded documents (aka= shred), ect. in our compost piles, garden beds and chickens’ nest boxes. My spouse gave me a “brick maker” (the burning kind not the building kind!) for the holidays, that uses shred. We use paper bags, from the store, to store and carry kindling – aka sticks – keeps it from getting everywhere in the house.

   Reply
5. 

   Richard

   at

   I use cardboard in the aisles of my garden, between the plant rows. It completely stops weeds from growing, minimizes dirt I track back into the house, and over the growing season, it decomposes enough to be part of the mulch. Make sure to use cardboard with minimal or no color printing if possible.

   Reply
6. 

   Richter

   at

   When we lived in the country, We take those boxes apart, Lay them out flat. Cutting some into Strips, we’d roll each strip up neatly, until each roll would just fit inside a Juice can, After we got as many cans filled with that Corrugated Cardboard, mom would pour used oil (From Oil Changes) onto some & Hot Wax on the others. The ones with Wax, she would place Corn-Cobs in the Center, like giant wicks. These made Great ‘ SMUG POTS for the Apple Trees. as well as heating some water we had stored for the cattle’s water tank.in the early winter, Sure beat the heck out of Chopping Ice when that tank froze over.
   But that Idea of mulch beds are a good one, So is using that corrugated board for Night-Crawlers (Giant Worms) as well as the other worms too.
   By.

   Reply
7. 

   Bruce

   at

   While I recycle most of my cardboard and paper products I save my medium sized corrugated cardboard to use as backstop material for my indoor BB/Pellet gun range. I have a tarp under the whole works so cleanup of the shredded cardboard is quick and easy. I only use corrugated because those steel BBs tend to bounce back if the backstop is too dense.

   Oh and those shredded boxes that fall onto my tarp go right into my pulp bucket and then pressed in my homemade PVC press. The compressed pellets make a fine firestarter/log substitute once they are thoroughly dried.

   Reply