Who needs a babysitter or gaming system if you’ve got cardboard boxes laying around?  Hands down, these are THE greatest, THE most universal toy of all time, throughout all time.  They transcend gender and favor no region.  It is the same across the world, for every boy or girl.

But wait…not everyone is creative, right?  Well, thankfully for us, there are A LOT of creative people out there, and double thankful for us is that we have the internet where those creative people can post their creative ideas for us to discover and try to duplicate.  And so, without further ado, here are 5 fabulous and fun ideas for how to transform your cardboard boxes into an amazing time:

CASTLE– hands down, the first and most obvious suggestion is a fortress! The bigger the box the better, but don’t be discouraged because you can put together smaller boxes and still make a super convincing castle (do I need to specify sans moat?).

BALL MAZE– a favorite with little boys, this is the option for when you have a bunch of wrapping paper or paper towel tubes laying around. A couple ping pong balls or matchbox cars call this complete, although you will probably find yourself joining the youngsters as they experiment with what will and what will not roll.

SLIDE– have you ever used a towel or a strip of cardboard to go down the stairs like a slide? Well, the idea has developed into something much safer, and MUCH more comfortable.  Take all of your cardboard boxes, open them up and tape them together laying over the stairs.  Don’t forget to put a couple pillows or a mattress at the bottom for the best results possible.

STOREFRONT– every kid loves to play “store” or “restaurant”. If you have some engineering skills, or at least a lot of self-confidence, take some time to cut out a storefront and add some cardboard shelves where the junior entrepreneurs can hock their wares.

BEANBAG GAME– any box at all will be perfect for the beanbag game, and the best part is that you only need one box! Cut it in half diagonally and then cut some holes in the new “tops”.  Make the holes different sizes, worth higher and lower points.

If you don’t have any beanbags on hand, fill up some old socks with whatever is close enough to dried beans and tie the tops shut.  Great for a rainy day, and the kind of game mom and dad don’t mind being asked to play.

There are so many ways to give a gift.  There’s simply no need to stick to the plain old, boring status quo!  Too many times we go over the checklist in our mind (cardboard boxes, tape, wrapping paper…).  We don’t even stop to think about all of the fun ways we can giftwrap something.  Did I mention easy and cheap, too?   You don’t have to be Martha Steward to hand someone the most adorable package they’ve ever seen.  If you’ve got Pinterest and YouTube you’ve got everything you need!

Sans Cardboard Boxes

Let’s start by saying “no” to plain old cardboard boxes.  Nowadays, there are templates and patterns online that you can download and print out and then trace on beautifully designed cardstock.  Literally, with a couple rolls, tucks, and bends you can create a package that yawns open at the corners, unfolding like a flower, with a cylinder in the middle holding the actual gift.

Another favorite of mine are like little fortune cookies.  Once again, using cardstock, you can fashion hollow geometric shapes and then stick a little piece of ribbon or thin paper out with the name of the participant.  These make awesome party favors.

Random Materials

You  might be scared to branch out, but trust me, this is one of those times when it’s okay to do so.  Sometimes people use a cute scrap of cloth or even a beautiful scarf to wrap their gifts in.  This is all well and good but you can achieve the same effect with a fifty-cent piece of felt from your local craft store.  Once again, there are plenty of how-tos all over the internet, so don’t get give up before you even get started.  Felt and ribbon.  That’s like three bucks.  And if you are really liking the wrapping-turned-bonus-gift idea just use a coffee mug!  Everyone uses coffee mugs (they do, right?).  Stuff it with tissue paper, slip a gift card inside, that’s all it takes.  See! You don’t have to be a creative genius to make it happen.

Embellishments

Perhaps my favorite thing about gift-wrapping is embellishing.  This is simply not how things were done when I was growing up.  You were lucky if the paper was cute.  But now there are SO many ideas, and most of them aren’t that groundbreaking.  Skip the designed wrapping paper altogether and go with a solid color.

Then, make it fun and 3D by adding your own touch: glue buttons or pompoms all over a package; use washi tape to create designs and pictures.

Do not go on Pinterest if you want to continue feeling good about yourself.  Do go on Pinterest if you want see how talented, creative, and apparently wealthy everyone else is.

Of course I’m just kidding.  Pinterest is a wonderful resource, and if you treat it for what it is (namely, an internet website), you can walk away without hating yourself.  It’s true that there are now new forms of depression and obsession that have developed solely because of social media, and that makes sense.  They call them “Pinterest fails” for a reason.  And have you ever seen any of those?  Hilarious!  But honestly, if we embraced the components of our own lives we might be able to give some of those creative, witty, and resourceful Pinterest ideas a try!

If you simply type in “cardboard boxes” you will immediately see pin after pin of awesome looking DIY cardboard toys.  Okay, let’s stop there.  I said “give some of these try”.  Not “replicate them to perfection”.  The fact is that we aren’t starting out with the same resources of whomever that even created what they have posted (starting at our brains), so we can automatically start to assume that our project will NOT come up looking the same.  And that’s okay.

Do you have some cardboard boxes?  If you do, awesome.  You are one step closer to attempting a cool Pinterest idea.  So, you type in “cardboard boxes”.  You can make a pirate ship or a mailbox.  If you have a ton of them you can tape them all together and make a maze.  You can make a marble labyrinth game, which actually gave me an idea… I took some old cardboard boxes that were in the burn pile and cut them down so that they were trays.  I squirted different colors of paint on the bottom.  Tossed in a couple of black walnut pods and taught the children how to hold and tip the tray so that the black walnuts would roll through the paint and create a very Jackson Pollock-esque painting.

Don’t have kids?  Dress up the boxes with cloth and rope and turn it all into a beautiful storage box, or any number of organizational containers.  Don’t even want to make anything, you were trying to find those subscription boxes and you couldn’t remember what they were called for the life of you?  Those pop up, too (and they are my favorite).  I want to try all of those subscription boxes… but I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars, and that would just happen.

I’ve got cardboard boxes coming out of my ears.  Most of the time we throw them into the garage and save for bonfires, since we also have brush and scrap wood come out of our ears.  Let me just say, when we make a bonfire, it is a good bonfire!  The point is, though, that I’ve got cardboard boxes coming out of my ears.  Diaper boxes, Kleenex boxes, boxes from grocery shopping at Aldi.  All of the boxes that all of those groceries are packaged in!  Pizza boxes.  Boxes from Amazon shipments.  I could probably keep naming some, but I don’t want everyone to get bored.

I finally got sick of the giant pile growing in my garage, and I like to consider myself a pretty creative person, so I sat down and thought up some random ways that I could transform all of that bonfire material slash garbage pile into something useful, and also cool.

The Kleenex box towel holder has to be my favorite.  It was also the easiest to make.  Cut a diagonal line from the slit going into each corner.  Put some glue on what have now become the flaps.  Fold the flaps into the box.  Use the twine-looking rope (called “jute”) to wrap around the box, starting at the very bottom.  Line the inside with canvas fabric, making sure to fold it over the edge to make a border on the outside.  Voila!  Fold three hand towels and prop them in the box.  I keep mine on the back of the toilet for the kids to use when washing their face or for when guests come over.

I know I mentioned food packaging when I was talking about all of the cardboard boxes in my garage, but specific to the food packaging are cereal boxes.  There is a new cereal box being added to the pile just about every week.  I took two of them and used them to make magnetic paper bins that I keep on my refrigerator.  Cut the top off, angling down so that the front is lower than the back, and cover the entire thing in pretty paper.  Glue some heavy duty magnetics to all four corners on the back, but make sure they really are heavy duty.  It would defeat the purpose if the bins keep sliding off or falling down.  Now you can keep your mail, homework assignments, shopping lists, coupons, bills…off the desk but still nearby!

Let’s take a minute to consider some things that we can identify just by a snapshot of what they are made out of.  You can easily tell whether you are looking at a zebra, a giraffe, or a flower, just by the designs.  You can easily tell whether you are looking at a bird, a reptile, or a rock just by the texture.  These things and animals are custom designed.  They are who they are.

Now, let’s take this same illustration and use it on the business side of things.  What are some business that you can easily distinguish by their custom design?  Or, as we refer to it, their logo?  The golden arches of McDonalds.  The swoosh of Nike.  The checkered flag for Microsoft.

Okay, so now lets take all of this talk about custom designs and logos and think about what these companies are associated with.  Namely, what is their brand?  McDonalds is clearly fast food.  Nike is activewear.  Microsoft is electronics.  These are clearly their brands.

What about you?

Did you know that customizing your shipping boxes helps identify your company?  People should be able to look at your logo and easily identify that it comes from your company and what you sell.

Customizing your shipping boxes isn’t really as complicated as you might think it is.  Or as expensive.  If you buy wholesale you are one step ahead of the game.  A friend of mine used to just put her company sticker on the outside of all of the boxes she sent out.  It was a cheaper way for her to start out, and it still notified the customer that what they were waiting for had arrived.  At the same time, anyone who just so happened to handle the box in transit had a chance to wonder a company like that had to offer, and they might even check out the website, and maybe even buy something.  There is really nothing to lose.

Some people go all out and order specially made shipping boxes.  These boxes are printed on during the actual manufacturing process.  It’s pretty obvious that you would have to be well-established (and well off!) in order to take it to this level.  Another friend of mine used to sell an oddly shaped piece of equipment that was easily breakable, and so he had a special plastic, protective mold made that fit perfectly into his shipping boxes.