Box Hunting

I’ve been dumpster diving three times this week. (For real!) I have discovered that hunting for the perfect boxes to move my stuff in is a real hoot! Yesterday I was pulling around behind a liquor store (they have the absolute best boxes ever you know) and saw a guy pulling up to a dumpster for the business across the street. To myself, I thought “don’t you get my boxes!” but I am so freaking shy around strangers, I said nothing. I then realized he was not looking for boxes, he was throwing boxes away! Oh and get this: his business sells boxes! How ironic to catch the box man throwing his box boxes away. Of course I waited until he was gone and snatched those box boxes for myself, I sure did!

This morning I stopped traffic twice trying to peek behind shopping centers as a I passed.  I thought I had struck out until I pulled in to my destination and saw an overflowing dumpster 50 feet away at the building next door... Home Run, Baby!  Now my car is full again with that awkward box-glue smell!

I have always been a little bit weird about boxes anyway. I hate throwing boxes away, especially pretty ones. When I got married, the store where I was registered sent gifts in these wonderful square boxes with ribbons built in. I wanted to keep every one of them! I did keep a few and have them still.

Right now the boxes I search for will hold our possessions as we move next week. Most boxes simply hold merchandise for a while, and then go on to the recycling plant to become a box again. Some lucky few, however, live forever, holding somebody’s long lost treasures, in hopes to spark a memory of loved ones, good times, and to perhaps teach the next generation something about the last. I wonder how many of these boxes I am pulling from dumpsters will remain in our household. Which ones will become flimsy and half disintegrated as they hold treasure for my son’s grandchildren to behold? Which one might not be unpacked for months - holding that “thing we could never find”, taunting us from inside the unopened dumpster/liquor store boxiness that it is?

So I tread carefully and secretly on my box hunt. They must be perfect. No tears or flaws. A truly unblemished box is a real find, like striking gold. But this is a lone journey. I do not allow partnering in my box hunt. There is a certain zen to it, and I revel in my catch!



Create Cute Gift Boxes!