Halloween Treats for Trick or Treating

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This year is going to be more complicated for all social gatherings or festivals.  It is unfortunate because one of the most social events is going to be looked at differently this year due to Covid-19.  The fun times of Trick or Treating may not be what they once were.  People are now fearful of even being around other people more or less touching something that someone just touched.  So I think there need to be some rules when it comes to handing out treats this year to all the young ones who should still be able to expereince this fun tradition.  That is what I want to go over today and it is the rules that you should consider for handing out those treats this year. 

Now I am not a professional treat giver or healthcare provider so these are just my thoughts and opinions on ways to keep people safe and to still enjoy a fantastic holiday.  You should always run health issues by your own healthcare provider to make sure they are up to your local standards.  I think the best thing to do this year is to focus on social distancing.  Even if you are not a believer that it really will make a big difference, it still does to some.  The goal is for kids to have fun and to be able to enjoy their favorite candy boxes without having a political or healthcare debate going on.  So my goal is to work on keeping everything distant.  That means not actually handing candy out to kids directly. 

In my opinion, I think we should also eliminate the need for knocking on doors and getting that close to your own or other people’s homes.  This is because the distance is the key to social distancing and 6 feet is most likely not going to be possible from a doorway and with all the knocking you may not want hundreds of kids knocking on your door and touching your knobs and bucket etc…. That is why there are some clever and fun ways to hand out treats safely.

I think the best way to do this would be individual packages or treats.  That means making a lot of little gifts or separating our candy so it is spread out on your porch or driveway.  That is a really cool thing to think about and do.  Having the ability for kids to not touch anything but the direct treats is a really cool idea. 

The need for specific packaging is going to be key this year.  Many parents are going to want to clean the candy boxes and packages before they are given to their kids to eat.  That means you should get candy that can be cleaned.  So look for plastic packaging that can be sprayed with COVID-19 killing agent and then be opened and safely injured. That is going to be the biggest part of this year and it will be edible candy.  So work on shopping wisely and understanding that not all of us think or believe the same things.  But we want the kids to all to have a fun and enjoyable time trick or treating this year.  That is the main thing to think about. I hope you have a fantastic holiday and a fun time this year.

How we saved our home with boxes

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This year my wife and I decided to take on a really complicated task.  We decided to take on a new place to live and saw an opportunity to make our lives a little bit better with a whole lot of work.  Due to the housing marketing being so good before the COVID-19 pandemic we moved into a super nice neighborhood at the lowest price that had ever been available in it.  This also came with a caveat of moving into a non-move in ready home.  We ended up with a timeframe to fix up the vast majority of the home and also we ended up with a giant mess doing so.  We ended up using cardboard boxes to organize and save our ability to live there.

The best decision we made was to work more organized.  Moving into a new home was going to be an exciting thing and at first, we were super happy about the ability to move into a great place with such a low cost. We didn’t have a ton of stuff moving from a small apartment into a large home but what we did have was still a bit too much for the location due to all the work we are doing with it.  I think that our issue was we were constantly working on the majority of the house at the same time.  By the time we moved in we only had really one room that was finished and able to be lived in and that was our bedroom. 

With the entire house being under construction we found that we simply didn’t have a lot of space to live.  It was livable until the winter started to kick in hard.  The issue that we had was that we could no longer work on projects the yard and we only had the space available in our garage to do messy jobs such as cutting wood and staining.  This left us with a big issue because our garage was so full of items and products.   This was where we had to organize in order to find room to work.  The house was already too full to add the garage stuff to ti so we had to be cleaver.  What we did was order a bunch of high-end cardboard boxes and we started to get to work.

We began by organizing all of our items by type and use.  This was important because we need to still be able to get to the items that we used constantly easily.  We decided that we could use the vertical space in our garage in order to save space.  We started packing up and actually building our towers vertically as well. 

In order to do this correctly, we ended up creating a system to know what we were stacking.  We stacked our packages by the type of items that are in it and the use we will need it for.  So an item we will use most often we will put a 1 on and a 5 on items that we wouldn’t not use much.  Then we would stack the packages in that order 1 on top so we could grab it out easy.  With this, we had more room to work and a garage we could continue to use. 

Getting the Right Tape

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I never imagined that some situations would happen in 2020.  The movement from brick and mortar business to eCommerce has taken the entire country by storm.  The reality is though that with all the lockdowns and regulations that it is much safer to be an eCommerce company in 2020 than any other.  This is simply due to the demand for shipping.  People are not going out of their homes nearly as much and in many cases, they are not allowed to by law.  This means that the demand for online shopping has skyrocketed.  It has also meant that the need for shipping has increased and the products that are needed to do it.

If you are getting into the shipping industry or your company is now finding that its most important department is shipping then there are some good lessons to learn and know.  The big thing to know is to make sure you are staying competitive in the market.  This is hard to due because technology is so vast and people can learn anything.  But having good relationships with companies is a big way to stay on top of the competitive nature of eCommerce. 

One major area that you need to be competitive in and can really crush competition is having a most efficient shipping supplies supplier.  It is more important to make sure you have good quality contact that can get you the gear you need and on time.  There is no way to ship without product and having a company fail on delivering the things you need is not good.  That is why having a great contact is a good thing and being able to buy products in bulk is a big part of having a great contact.

Shipping supplies are simply expensive and you need to be able to find a place to get them at a good discount.  I have to say that being competitive is more than shopping on Amazon versus going to your local store.  Yes, Amazon will be cheaper, but it will also be way higher than a major store that only sales these items and gives bulk discounts.  Bulk Discounts are a huge part of this industry and making sure you know what you need is part of it.

You need to know every amount of each item you use per shipment.  This is tedious and can end up saving you tons of money. My business found a big problem with spending when we were packing up boxes to ship.  Our packers were using about 10 strips of packing tape per box.  To all of us this seemed normal and was needed to hold the weight of all these items.  But when talking with a specialist in the industry from our supplier we found that our tape was thin and not capable of sustaining our competitive nature.  So he started to inform me and my company of thicker tape that could do the job in 3 strips of tape.  This was shocking but we figured that it would just cost more.  It did, but not relative to the project.  The tape costs 25% more, but also we would be using 200% less of it. The savings were incredible and once we trained our staff they were happy they didn’t have to tape nearly as much. So I hope this tip helps you and your company!

Garage Filled with Boxes?

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This weekend was certainly a lot of work at my house.  We decided to start cleaning out our garage after the COVID-19 pandemic.  It has been a long time since our State got back to any kind of normal but since we are all able to go back to work just about as usual we are finding that going out and doing normal things again is happening too.  That means that housework is getting back to normal and we found that our garage was riddled with Amazon packages.  It was just wrong and it was filling up our garage.  Now we know we needed to organize and move a lot of things from our garage to our shed, and this was the time to do it.

This all started out with us having to clean out a shed that we had never used.  It was filthy because the tenate who lived at out home kept a dog in there and never cleaned anything.  So with a shovel, broom, and preasurized hoze we went to town with bleach.  It took a few hours to clean and to dry but once we were done we were able to start taking all the filled cardboard boxes from the garage and move them into the shed. This took many hours to get it all sorted and filled up but it left us with a good amount of space in our garage.  Then we had to decide what to do with the insane stack of Amazon packages and how to best get rid of them.

We first tried to fill them with things and move them to the shed.  We did this for what we could but we still had a pile several feet long and many feet tall of cardboard boxes in our garage.  It was really hard to figure out what to do because we didn’t want to simply put these in the trash.  The next issue is that we are only able to recycle one trash can at a time and all these packages were simply not going to fit.  We tried just stacking some in the can, but that would literalyl take a year to recycle that way and we knew we were going to have to start breaking them down.

So first we started to break them down with out hands and we ran into trouble.  Those massive staples in some of the packages were simply too tough to overcome.  That left us with a sad feeling and our hands were in pain trying to overcome the stress.  So we then decided that we needed to get scissors to break them down and get them into the can as neatly as possible.  We each got through one box before our hands were red and about to start blistering.  That was a bad idea, but we decided a knife was the answer.  So I went into my fishing kit and got out a nice fixed blade knife.

This fixed blade had a great rubber handle and was made of a good stainless steel to deal with fish and water without rusting.  It was a fallkniven f1 knife and it went through the packages really well. So the next time you run into the same issue as us you now know what to do and how to recycle them all safely and quickly.

Is Candy On your Shopping list?

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This year there are so many words being thrown out. Pandemic and Essential have been played to death and are getting on my nerves.  The topic came up when I told a friend that I was going to the store to get snacks for the family. They immediately chastised me for putting lives at risk over snacks. Let me tell you that snacks are life and I am happy to take that risk in order to live a normal life and have a happy family. I want to let you know that the need for anything outways the risk of freedom and if you need to get some top of the line candy boxes for your family then go right ahead and go to the store.

The issues that have arrived this year are always based on the word essential.  Food is essential, and life, liberty, and the pursuit of justice are as well. It is when someone goes and tells me that any kind of grocery shopping is not essential that I must protest.  I live in the United States due to freedom and going shopping is part of that.  I take a massive risk of driving to the store. The risk of getting into a crash is always there and that is higher than any other health risk in the world. I say this to let people know that they are at risk of dying every day. It is a normal thing and we all have most likely been in a car wreck or no someone who has died from one.  So going to the grocery store has always been a big risk. 

Candy kiosk inside a shopping mall

There truly should be no limits on what is considered essential food.  If your family is going crazy from being locked inside together going on 4 months than anything to save your sanity is essential. That is how I look at many things these days.  It is no one’s right to tell you what food is good and what is not. That is part of why we live in this country and that is the freedom that it brings.  Yes, that even comes down to the candy boxes we choose when walking down that lovely aisle. So indeed don’t let anyone tell you what food is essential or even come close to taking away the choice as to that. It could mean later on that some choices for food for your children may be limited. The FDA says aspartame and corn syrup are healthy. If they are soon the only options then we may all be dying of following the rules if they take away healthy alternatives.

I mean to say that going to the grocery store is really simple.  It should be allowed anytime and there is no reason to ever tell someone not to go.  The right of freedom is involved and even in 2020 when pandemics that don’t seem to be causing much harm are happening essentially has taken a different turn. So do not fret, but go out and be free. Enjoy your amazing groceries and don’t be afraid of news that is proven to be false every day.  Don’t let your friends who have been persuaded to think the world is ending dictate your actions. That would be the end of freedom and freedom of thought as we have known it.