Category Archives: Packing Supplies

Too Much Cardboard

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Are you in the same boat as I am.  Is your house filling up with excessive amounts of Cardboard boxes?  Seriously, I am starting to be at a loss of what to do with all of this extra stuff laying around.  I know the excessive amounts of it are due to the Covid-19 Pandemic and continued riots.  The shutdown of our economy and lockdowns has simply left us with shopping more online than ever before.  I am seriously ordering more from amazon, and other online companies than any other time in my life.  This is leading to up to 2 to 4 boxes arriving at my home each day. The amount of cardboard boxes that is now in my garage needing to be dealt with has reached proportions of 6 feet by 10 feet by 6 feet of boxes in my home.  This is getting insane. The real issue is I am not really too sure on how to get rid of it. But I am going to go through my plan.

First I think the best way to get it out is simply to put it in my weekly trash.  We are not allowed to use recycling again as of the lockdowns.  I am not sure how that is not essential but I would contact your local government and let them know that you think it is just as I have done. 

The fact that all these boxes are going to go to waste does hurt me on the inside and I feel like I am hurting the planet around me because of this.  But my goal is to now just move them out slowly through my weekly trash pickup.  I am however limited to 10 50 gallon bags of trash per week.  The issue is I still have normal trash and extra yard work trash to put out each week and this leaves little left for boxes.

So my next plan is to cut the boxes up into small sections and place them in bags.  I wish there was another way, but my goal is to go into my closet and pick out a fixed blade knife that has the best handle ergonomics.  I want this so I dont get blisters and I also want to match it with the best edge retention steel. This is because cardboard is dense and abrasive then I plan to cut it up in small pieces and place in the bags to trash.  That is my goal and I hope this is something you can do as well.

Trips do DQ

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Life has dramatically changed over the last year.  The existence of many things is now gone and part of that is dining in at most restaurants.  The change has brought about a new way of life and a new way to experience it. This week I learned that lots of people still want the things they wanted a few months ago and are willing to wait a long time for them.  This was made prevalent on my trip to the dairy queen with my wife last night. We were under the impression that a trip to get some ice cream would make the end of our night perfect.  So we hopped in the car after putting on some shoes and headed to the store.

Upon driving up to the DQ I noticed lots of lights near the store.  It turned out that the light were indeed about 30 cars lined up in the drive through.  It was strange because technically the inside of the store should have been open but it was not. This made us a bit sad because we knew we would be waiting for a long time.  Since the inside was closed we imagined that the line would go very quickly. Unfortunately, it did not and was a very poor waiting process. There was one upside to being forced to wait a long time.

The upside is that we got to go through the entire menu on our phones for a long time and talk about the best items to get.  Many were based around our favorite candy box candy. I mean is there much better than getting your favorite type of candy box in your ice cream? I am honestly not sure and I sure love a reese cup filled blizzard. My wife went for the oreo route after much debate and was a bit disappointed.

The big issue was that we waited a very long time and the order we received was shodilly put together and an extra topping was missing. It really showed a very poor lack of management.  A store that was being staffed with so many people should have had that line flying and orders should be correct considering that you are only taking one order at a time and not the 4 to 5 when the store is running at normal capacity. Overall the experience was a bust and most likely we will not repeat that fiasco again.

Real Estate and Moving

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The market is about to blow up. That is what we hear every 10 years or so and it is usually run by a credit cycle that our housing market goes through.  It looks like currently is one of the best times to ever buy a home.  The lending industry has negative interest rates on the rise and that means a home could be purchased for the smallest interest rates of possibly all time soon.  So is it time to get the cardboard boxes packed up and look for a new home! I want to go over some of the possibilities that are coming in the market and some things that may affect what you do with your real estate purchases in the future. 

The first thing to know is that interest rates are prime.  This is always a huge part of purchasing a home and that is because most everyone does not pay cash for a home.  The majority of Americans are in mass amounts of debt and that comes homes in a big way.  When people buy a home they end up getting a loan and mortgage to end up purchasing it.  The note is the debt and mortgage is the paperwork that states you will lose your home if you don’t pay for it. 

The extra amount of money the lender makes on interest is the incentive for them to actually give you money to buy a home.  The percentages for lending money these days are going to their lowest amount in my lifetime.  Soon it is actually rumored that interest rates on the federal level will reach less than zero.  This means that banks will lend money at most likely all time lowes.  This ends up in thousands saved over 15 to 30 years of interest accruing during the time living in the house.

This also means lower monthly payments on mortgages.  So if you are ready to get your cardboard boxes packed up and move to a new house you may be paying less for the same size house per month.  Many people are refinancing and saving 200 to 500 a month on mortgage payments.  This allows them to either pay off their house faster or have more income to spend on other things during the same time frame. So if you are thinking about moving or getting into your first house.  Now really is a great time to start looking.

Home Ideas for Quarantine

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This year I found myself at home for the last 8 weeks. It was not by choice and as a matter of fact it was not for any personal health reasons. And no I was not fired either.  The reason I am at home is because of the Covid-19 Pandemic that has spread across the world.  The state I live in created unconstitutional laws that forced me to not go to work.  My job was labeled not vital enough to go to work for.  So I have been at home and it has actually been rough.

Physically my body was really struggling due to not having my work gear at home.  So I have had to improvise to create a work environment that is capable of going to each day.

At home I do not have my own desk.  I started out working from my couch and with a laptop computer.  This was workable for several days until my back began to hurt.  It started at a slow pain that was manageable and I started working out more thinking I just needed to keep moving.  Instead it began to get worse and my back pain turned into my sciatica nerve shooting pain all over my body.  It turns out this was due to the couch not providing enough support.  So I spent a week on medication to lessen the swelling around my nerves. 

From there I went on a journey to find a better way to work.  I brought in kitchen chairs into my living room and created a makeshift desk and sitting chair.  I found that my wrists started to hurt after days of typing because the keyboard was not at the proper height.  I then decided to grab some games which are made from cardboard boxes to prop up my laptop and mouse. 

This eliminated my wrist issues and my back slowly started to become more comfortable as well. From there I actually used side tables to put my cardboard boxes and computer on.  This allowed me to pull my chair up under it and make it a very small and mobile desk.

The mobility allowed me to then put it all back after work was done.  This gave me the psychological break I needed between work and home that I was also struggling with. Work cannot go on all the time and need not be thought about at all times of the day especially from home.  So be adaptive and safe as you are trapped at home too.

Facts about The use of Cardboard

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The world has become increasingly smaller and people are now able to get items from all across the word.  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 17th century 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.  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.

A fact that will blow the average individuals 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. 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 then 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 mostly 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. 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 due.  So keep in my the need to recycle and try to do so with your paper products.