If I ever wanted to go into business I would probably start with one of two ideas: medical uniforms, or packaging and shipping supplies. You see, medical uniforms are always in high demand. You know how you go into the pediatrician’s office and all those cute scrubs just automatically make everyone a little bit happier? They are usually shiny and crisp looking; Sylvester the Cat or mustaches or Pooh Bear, not a stain in sight. These people have to buy those. They have to maintain a standard, you see. They have to look sharp, and friendly, and like they care. What does any of this have to do with packing boxes for sale? Not a whole heck of a lot, when you are looking at them together. But when you are looking at them as two separate, possible business enterprises it starts to make a little bit more sense.

Just like medical uniforms are in constant, high demand, so are packaging and shipping supplies! If I could offer packing boxes for sale in bulk, I think people would really respond to that. How many times, when you are getting ready to move, do you dread having to spend all that money on packaging supplies? If you buy any of it from a local department store you are sure to overspend, and forget about the actual moving stores. They upcharge like crazy! You probably wont wind up leaving yourself enough time to order online, either.

Enter: your local packaging and shipping supply store, with packing boxes for sale, packaging tape, moving blankets, you name it. On your way home from work you can go and pick up a bundle of boxes and set your mind at ease. I could even put together a moving bundle, with different size boxes, and tape, and bubble wrap, and those little divider things for cups and vases and stuff. And tall, skinny boxes for lamps because, let’s face it, moving lamps is a huge pain in the B-U-T-T. The crucial part is making sure that the prices are competitive to what is going on online. I bet moving companies would even start to purchase from a local store, at least in a pinch.

Of course I know that there are already stores that offer packaging and shipping supplies, but those are usually shipping stores, and they won’t offer everything necessary for packing up a whole house, and you certainly couldn’t buy it in large quantities.

So, yeah, I’ve got some thinking to do. The local college has a really great physician’s assistant program, and I could probably get signed on to provide them with their uniforms for the students. Or I could put up a sign that says “packing boxes for sale”.

I suppose it’s safe to say that there is always one of two elements constantly at work in our lives. The element of moving or the element of staying. We get a new job, or want to be closer to family, or just plain old want to enjoy a different environment, so we are suddenly in the status of moving. Even before we are actually, physically moving we spend the time leading up to it acting as if we are.

Some friends of ours will not be actually leaving their current home and taking up another in Florida until the summer, which is many months from now, but they still say, “We are moving.” And it would be the truth. We fill boxes for moving and then we actually go and when everything is unloaded from the truck it all suddenly transforms into boxes for staying. Suddenly, even though we don’t know anybody, even though we will have to Google maps where the grocery store is for the first couple times, we are staying. We don’t know the ins and outs of our new house yet, but it has become our home, and we are staying.

Boxes for moving become boxes for staying. It’s kind of a little bit like poetry. I guess you could even say that it is poetry; the poetry of life. We start packing the boxes for moving, putting the kids toys in them and our shoes and then there is the gratuitous miscellaneous box at the end that starts getting crowded with a bunch of random crap, because no matter how determined we are to maintain a system there still wind up being stray items at the end.

When we finally get unpacked all those boxes for moving become readily available as boxes for staying. The sport equipment gets packed up in them and gets put on a shelf in the garage, labeled with a black sharpie and you can call yourself organized. Another one with the summer pool toys, and another one with gardening supplies, and you have a system that you can really be proud of. How about winter clothes and summer clothes? You put them in their boxes and rotate them in and out of the attic pertaining to the season and your whole closet space opens up like never before.

What about you… Where are you right now? Are you moving, or are you staying?

Boxes didn’t always used to be corrugated, you know. And maybe you did know or maybe, if you are the type of person who doesn’t know much about boxes, you didn’t. Maybe you don’t even know what corrugated means. Well, that’s what I’m about to tell you. The dictionary describes corrugated as “to bend into alternate furrows or ridges”, or “to wrinkle”. Think ripple chips. But cardboard.

Cardboard started out just like thin sheets. Nowadays we call it poster board. And then some genius came along and decided to try something new. He put a corrugated sheet of poster board intbetween two other flat sheets of poster board, folded it and bent it and wound up with corrugated boxes. Anyone would tell you that it was a pretty genius move, including myself.

Since the day they were born, corrugated boxes have been on quite the journey. They’ve helped people move all over the world. They’ve seen war zone after war zone. They hold memories and keepsakes, staying strong over the years as they sit patiently in attics, never complaining; their only fault is perhaps being too attractive to mice and other varmints.

Without corrugated boxes we could never receive any shipments from Amazon that weigh more than a few ounces. We probably couldn’t receive any shipments at all, because it’s only the corrugated boxes that can withstand the hardy lifestyle and handling of the average delivery experience.

Everything is cheaper now because it comes in corrugated boxes. Suppliers don’t have to pay for heavy duty packaging because there is a better option. From diapers to dishes, appliances and cat litter. The opportunities are endless. I, for one, am super pleased that such a thing exists. Every time we make a purchase that has to do with cardboard we throw the remains of the packaging into the garage for a bonfire. Sometimes the pile grows mighty high, especially around the holidays when there is a lot of mail and gifts coming in.

All members of the family lend a hand and we march the boxes out to the firepit, taking as many trips as necessary. The best part is lighting it all on fire. The blaze sets in almost instantly, roaring across the giant heap, lifting higher and surging outward, producing a glow and warmth that is both magical and comforting. The ashes go wafting upwards, sometimes in large sheets, and we watch them until they disappear.

When my grandmother passed away it went the way this type of things go: bitter sweet. We know that it’s coming with our grandparents, and we can be prepared to a certain extent. Then, when it happens, it will still be surprising and heartbreaking but not the same as when it happens with someone that is young. My grandmother was my best friend, and I’m not saying that to be generous.

I hung out with her on the weekends and talked to her on the phone when I was driving. We sent each other silly cards in the mail. I asked for her advice and she told me stories about times that seemed impossible. She willed her house to me, and everything in it, and suddenly all of my life, the entire time I had known my grandmother, became a wall of cardboard boxes. The dishes that I had grown up using. The housecoats she wore over her dresses. The sewing materials. It was all packed into cardboard boxes.

I didn’t know what to do with it. I knew I couldn’t make a choice right then. At the time, I felt like I could never part from anything. I knew that I would have to wait until a season of my life where I had moved on from the pain and sense of loss. That season didn’t come when I got married, or when my husband and I bought our first home. To be sure it was all part of the process; it was all leading me along. My husband, bless his heart, was so patient with me, helping lug all of those cardboard boxes every time we moved.

He never once pressured me to open them. He never once scolded me for keeping them. Finally, the season came, and with it brought the arrival of our daughter. Throughout the pregnancy, I felt my grandmother’s presence as strongly as if she was with me again. Finally, I felt the compulsion to move on from being the granddaughter so that I could become a mother.

All of those cardboard boxes came opening wide, all of my childhood and my grandmother’s life came spilling out, and I found myself eating on those dishes again, and sewing those old housecoats into a quilt for my baby. Some of the items were donated to a good cause, and some of them entered seamlessly back into my world, as if they had been there all along.

There is a friend of mine who has a ton of kids. When I say she has a ton of kids, I really mean it. I’m not even going to tell you how many, but I will say that it’s in the double digits. And less than forty. I know for myself, with two children, that our need for storage did not simply double, since the number of people in our home doubled, it quadrupled and then doubled that. Somehow a couple boxes from the glory days became a lot easier to go through.

Throwing out CDs we hadn’t listened to in over a decade was actually a grateful task. With each box that we went through it was a grumble and a groan over what kind of garbage we were going to stumble across. So the tote of CDs was a no-brainer: trash! In the place of all of those boxes of paraphernalia and meaningless momentos went “baby stuff”. And then “more baby stuff”, and then “baby stuff for girls” next to “baby stuff for boys”. Suddenly, we found ourselves having to organize by months, and then years, and then stuff they couldn’t fit into anymore and stuff that they wouldn’t be able to wear for a while still.

The need for a highly organized system became crucial. This is where my friend with the buttload of kids comes in. She uses cardboard storage boxes for all of her storage needs, which is obviously much more intense than my own. Notice that I said “cardboard storage boxes” and not plastic totes or bins. There are a couple reasons for this. For one, she doesn’t like anything clear so that the kids can see what is going on in there and want to investigate. For another, the cardboard storage boxes are a lot easier to deal with.

They are a uniform size, easy to stack tightly. With the plastic ones- there is a lot of space in between and behind that doesn’t get used. One of the most hidden but probably most important benefits of going the “paper” route is that you are sticking to manageable sizes and that means they won’t get too heavy.

Those plastic bins come in some ginormous sizes, and you wind up needing upwards of three people to move them sometimes. When you go with cardboard storage boxes you find yourself doing a job that you can handle on your own. Oh, one last tip: write the contents of the box on an index card, and put it in an envelope taped to the front.