Shipping in 2021 is now not just a small part of the business.  eCommerce is now one of the major parts of the economy thanks to all the business shutdowns by the government.  It is simply a new way to attempt to stay employed and millions of people are starting companies trying to survive.  What this means is that they are now using packaging supplies more than ever.

This has made the world has become increasingly smaller and people are now able to get items from all across the world.  This has been marvelous for economic reasons and allowed many places in the world to thrive where their local economies would not allow it. It has also had some detrimental effects on different areas including the environment.  In particular, the use of cardboard has been increasing not only in the last few years but centuries.  It was created in the 1700s and slowly become the leading item for packaging supplies in the world. The United States per household throws away roughly 13,000 separate cardboard boxes every year.  Those numbers are based before the pandemic and now I would imagine that number is easily doubled and maybe even tripled.  That number will most likely increase due to the covid-19 pandemic.  Now since most Americans are forced to stay at home we are ordering more from online stores and being shipped our items in cardboard boxes. It has become possibly its own pandemic in a way due to the excess amount made and the inability to dispose of it properly. 

This all ties into a big issue of the creation of this product.  It is not surprising that a fact that will blow the average individual’s mind is that the amount of energy used to create cardboard.  If the amount of cardboard that was thrown away each eBay was instead used to heat houses.  Let’s put that into perspective.  Then 50 million average households would have the energy to heat their homes.  That amount is staggering and it shows that we spend more on creating cardboard than we most likely should.  In the United States alone we throw away 850 million tons of paper and cardboard.  That number is staggering to me and what that really means is that 1 billion trees were most likely cut down to create that amount of waste.  This means that the average American uses 7 trees all on their own just in paper waste. 

So let’s get into this, for me personally, that would mean I would cut down every tree on the property I own in one year.  This for myself would be unsustainable because it would take 40 years to get my trees to grow back to the same size and that number and time involved is hard to wrap my mind around.  The amount of waste we are creating and the amount of energy we are spending to create that waste is most likely not sustainable.  If we could instead recycle every amount of paper we might be able to slow the degradation of our tree population down. This at the very minimum should be what we all do.  So keep in my the need to recycle and try to do so with your paper products. The environment needs this and our planet needs this.  

This is the time of year that is super fun.  I love the holidays and spending time with family, but it is also the time for a ton of extra work and especially if you love Christmas lights.  Christmas makes me think of my mom pulling out the decorations from under the staircase just before Thanksgiving would come around. Her storage typically consisted of big, long cardboard boxes containing her 7-or-so synthetic Christmas trees. Some people go way overboard and in the end, we all get the benefit of it. 

Now there are a lot of storage containers that held all of these, but of course, there were other containers and boxes of ornaments, decorations, and wreaths—but Christmas, to me, felt like a house with long brown boxes strewn about. I even recall it being hard to walk around the house simply because everything was so crowded and out in the walkways. Nothing embodied the Christmas spirit better than getting ready for the season with decorations and the house undergoing a lot of change.  So that is all just part of the holiday for me and it was a really cool addition.  Now here are a few tips on getting the most out of the boxes you may have to store away winter holiday decorations.

The hard part of the storage game can be with all of the ornaments.  While the delicate orb ornaments a lot of people think of when it comes to Christmas are better off left in the boxes they came in (usually partitioned cardboard boxes), your random assortment of baby’s 1st and Hallmark ornaments can be piled into whatever size boxes you have available.  These are super special and you don’t want anything to go wrong with them.
A good tip is to try layering your ornaments with a piece of fabric/felt. This will make sure they don’t get tangled and don’t chip off just from being picked up and moved around.

Storing trees always seems to be a bit complicated.  I hate that each year I need a new container for them.  As already mentioned, almost everyone seems to have a fake tree in a big box, whether it’s the one that the tree came in or otherwise. If you’ve misplaced your original tree box or time has simply gotten to it (or mice), try repurposing leftover boxes from house appliances. They’re usually big enough to do the job

Don’t forget to do the lights well.  Stringed lights define Christmas time pretty much better than anything. But when it comes to putting them away for the year, they can be a hassle. The first thing you should probably do is wrap them in a coil so that they’re easy to store and easy to untangle for the years to come. Again, boxes do wonders here, allowing you to stack different coils of lights in each without the worry of them tangling with one another.I hope these ideas can help.   If you’ve got a few spare boxes lying around the house, put them to use! Don’t even think about discarding them or burning them—you know there’s always a section of your house or season of the year that could use some organizing. Think seasonally! Any holiday can surely spark your imagination to consider putting things away neatly. What most people regard as fodder for fire or simply trash, you can use for tidiness.