Long Live The Cardboard Box!

Here's to the cardboard box! If the organizing industry chose a favorite tool, perhaps it would be the cardboard box.

It has long been recognized by observant parents that children have loads of fun playing with ordinary cardboard boxes. There's something about the inviting space created by a minimum of four sides and a bottom. Add top flaps and you really have a functioning system.

The challenge of folding the top four flaps of a box so that they stay closed without tape or other closure has always fascinated me. Is there a name for that process? If you know it, please share it with me.

Boxes are, of course, useful for inexpensive storage for all kinds of short term or long term needs. When we have multiple boxes of the same size, we can stack them. Voila, now we extended the storage capacity in a vertical manner.

Heavy duty boxes are available for purchase through moving companies and storage facilities. If you observe someone moving into your neighborhood, you can introduce yourself and ask if you can have some of their empty boxes. You'll gain a new friend and maybe some recycled boxes.

Have you used cardboard boxes in an interesting way? I would like to hear about it.

Comments

[chris]

We built an entire tradeshow booth out of cardboard boxes and zip ties; it was fun, you can see on our website. We call the process you're asking about with the box-flaps, tucking or nesting the flaps; it's good for temporary closure, but for shipping and longer storage you need to tape them right to get the full strength of the box.