Packing It Up

Moving boxes are expensive.  Truly, expensive.  Back in September Bill and I talked about it and agreed we would have to sell the house.  It was at that point that I began the task of downsizing and packing things away.  My favorite store (at this point in my life) is Costco.  Before we moved from VA, I searched online for Costcos and did my house search around that.  And now, all these many years later, it has been so beneficial.  While I've been using their boxes for years as a way to distribute popcorn at Boy Scout selling time, this time around I needed boxes that had lids.  Most of the boxes there have their lids cut off or never had any lids to begin with.  BUT, the food court and the bakery keep their lids.  Ice cream boxes, churro boxes, pizza ingredient boxes...all are awesome.  They work so well for books and other heavy stuff, because they're kinda small.  For bigger boxes, you have to head to the bakery.  They break theirs down, so you have to tape them back up, but they're also fantastic.

We have so many of these lining shelves in my parents' basement.  I have 25 boxes of homeschooling materials alone.  Now, not all of those are in these boxes, but a great many are.

I am so grateful that our friends at Costco told us to check with the bakery.  They don't bring their boxes up front like all the other boxes, so we had never seen then.  As we were clearly gathering boxes for a move, one of the ladies at the exit gave us that tip.  Bill promptly checked with them.  We had to coordinate a time to pick them up, because they break them down and then put them out to recycle, so we had to come back when they were breaking down so we didn't interrupt their flow.   I am so very thankful that Costco allows us to take boxes.  We have a large liquor store across the street from us that has posted signs saying they no longer hand out boxes for moving.  What a shame.  On the spectrum of reduce/reuse/recycle, reuse is better than recycling.  I can use what's already made, I don't need more energy to convert it to something else, there's no waste...  So thank you, Costco, for being such a wonderful company!!!