Episode 340 – Tackling cardboard boxes – both empty and full

Are boxes the bane of your life? Well you’re not on your own. Whether your boxes are empty or full you’re going to need a strategy to deal with them on your decluttering journey. In this podcast we’re delving into the cardboard boxes that are taking up all our valuable space.
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Transcript of this podcast episode
00:00
Are boxes the bane of your life? Well, you're not on your own. Whether your boxes are empty or full, you're going to need a strategy to deal with them on your decluttering journey. So in this podcast, we're delving into the cardboard you

00:23
you're listening to the declutter hug podcast, bringing you tried and tested no nonsense tips and advice from the leading experts in decluttering and organizing your home. Now here are your hosts Ingrid Jansen and Lesley Spellman. Music.

00:46
Hello and welcome listeners. I'm Ingrid and I'm Lesley. If you're new to the declutter hub podcast, you're so welcome. What you'll find is that we try and find a fun factor in the serious business of decluttering. And if you've been here for a while, you know exactly what we mean. So thank you so much for listening. If

01:06
you'd like to get involved in conversations relating to this podcast, it all takes place in our Facebook group. So come and join our lovely, warm, supportive community. To find the Facebook group, go to declutter hub.com, forward slash group to find out more, or you can search for the declutter hub community on Facebook. Well, Lesley

01:25
here, we are talking about boxers. I mean, do you think this will be useful for people to talk about boxes? I mean, we think it is, but I

01:35
just feel like, before we hit record, maybe we've kind of hit an all time low that we're doing a whole podcast on a cardboard box. Do you know what I mean? All sounds a bit crazy. When? What did you do today at work? Yeah, we talked about cardboard boxes for half an hour. People remember what? But I think it's really important, and it's something that comes up quite a lot from people, and we want to delve into an empty box. So empty cardboard boxes and then full cardboard boxes. Now, empty cardboard boxes are definitely easier to deal with than full cardboard boxes, but we're trying to gonna try and give strategies for both. But let's, let's start with easy stuff, and let's talk empty boxes. I think it's really important for us to try and think about why, why do we keep so many boxes? What is it about an Amazon box, or any kind of box that comes through the door that we think? Do you know what that's going to be super handy

02:29
that I'm going to keep it? Yeah, because we see it all the time, don't we? Lesley, every client we have ever worked with, we found cardboard boxes, some of them scattered around the house, some of them in a room, like a little towering block of things that is just about to fall over, in garages, in utility rooms, sometimes in the loft, sometimes empty, sometimes full, but yes, all over the place. And that is why we're doing a podcast, because it's you're not on your own. If you're like, Yeah, I've got a lot of empty boxes, because they might come in handy one day. You know, let's talk about it.

03:07
I think it comes from that place of, if we are somebody who holds on to things generally, which most people in our community are, or are certainly on a journey of, to extract themselves out of that place. I think we try and see a purpose for everything that comes in, and that's where it stems from. We're like, that's a useful box. If I were to send a parcel, if I were to need to take something breakable to the charity shop, if I were to be moving house, that box would be super useful. But what we do is we put that kind of what if, just in case scenario, in front of or ahead of our needs. Now, which is more space over this, over the cardboard box, right? We need more space, we need less stress, we need more time, we need less stuff to manage all of those things are more important than keeping a cardboard box for the unlikely event in most instances, and in most instances, it is unlikely, because they're still sitting there 10 years later in a lot of houses that we're going to need it. So we need to really look at today. Do we we need to evaluate what we're doing? Are we an eBay that's sending things out all the time. Yeah, of course, you're going to need cardboard boxes, and that's absolutely fine, because that's realistic. But for most people, it's just yeah, might be useful. It's like, yeah,

04:29
yeah. I've even heard Yeah, I am. It's really handy to have some boxes when I'm going to move house. And then you're asking, oh, are you buying some move house? No, I'm. I've been living in this house for like, 23 years, and you're like, this makes in my head, this makes no sense whatsoever, but it's that indeed that what if scenario, right? What if I suddenly move house? Well, that's normally not going to happen overnight, either. You will have time to find some boxes, trust me. And. If you're a bit like a person who likes to shop online all the time, boxes will be coming in all the time.

05:06
I know. I think that's it. I think it's more like that another box is going to land in your home before you're going to need a box. That's the thing. And so we need to wean ourselves off from the boxes. And the ideal is that we wean ourselves from the boxes coming in at all. So the end goal, and the reason why we're sort of talking about this in the podcast, is we want to stop the boxes. Of course, there are things that we need, and they will come in a box. I mean, it's a bit annoying, really. Amazon, they've got much better, haven't they? I mean, I know other retailers are available, but many of us are used to buying stuff on Amazon, right? And so, you know, they have got better with the sizes of the sizes of the boxes and things like that, but they used to send these, like, massive boxes, didn't they, for like, tiny little things? Yeah, and all of that needs to be dealt with, you know? I mean, we're not too bad, really. So because I'm a declutter and sometimes I would take cardboard from people's houses, I I've got two blue bins, which it is. And so in the UK, we have different color bins for different things. And so we have a paper bin, paper and cardboard, as far as two bins, they allow you to have extra bins for recyclables, but not for general waste, because you sort of restricted here as to how much you can put in general waste. So I've got two bins, and so I'm all good for the cardboard, all good for the cardboard. I can put things away. But I think, yeah, we really need to sort of get to that stage where the boxes are not coming in the first place. But before that, let's tackle the boxes. What are we going to do Ingrid? Well,

06:24
I think you have to be really looking at each box and go, okay, is this going to be sensible? Of course, you know, having one or two boxes is not going to make or break your whole decluttering journey. But if you look around and go, Yeah, that's me. I've got boxes here, there and everywhere. Honestly, you need one or two. The rest need to be folded down and put into the recycling. Because what are you going to do with it all? Or if you know, maybe you know, you happen to be lucky and talk to a friend that morning or at work or in the shop or somewhere, and they go, Oh, I'm actually going to move. Or I need some boxes. You can go, I actually have some. I know one of our members actually put some of her boxes on a free giveaway site because they were really, really sturdy. They were not flimsy. And she thought they can have a second life. But let's be honest, most cardboard can just go straight into your recycling bin. It can all be kind of mulched down to pulp and be another recycle, you know, another box in the future. So, but let's keep that supply going out instead of keeping it all in your house.

07:33
And there's one more thing that's really important to say as well, that we need to get a handle on many. Many of our members, of our listeners, of our clients have boxes turning up on a regular basis, and they don't know what's in the boxes. So there's, these are orders that have been placed online, and you're not sure what they are, and people just leave them so regularly Ingrid, and I go to homes, and there are Amazon boxes that have not even been opened. And so that's, that's a real sign, and something you need to do with that. And we depending on where you are on your decluttering journey, on your shopping journey, you know, that's for you to work through, but that's a sign that you need to look at your intentional shopping.

08:13
Now, Lesley, I wanted to add one more thing to this, to the empty boxes as well, and that is that sometimes it can be handy to keep an empty box. You know, larger boxes, one or two, but if you got some smaller boxes, a shoebox, for example, or a box from a mobile phone, or kind of smaller books that are kind of quite sturdy, it can be really helpful to keep them, because they can be really used for, like dividers in drawers as a temporary solution. So don't go completely cold turkey. Keep some of the smaller boxes. But if you've got shoe boxes with a lid attached, in my opinion, they can go because, again, they are not very handy to use. But shoe boxes with a lid that is loose can be really helpful to use for dividing absolutely

09:02
so empty box says, in a nutshell, pair them right down and recycle them. You will always be able to get another box. Imagine how many boxes are out there in the ether. At the moment, you know they're getting delivered around left, right and center. If you've not got a box for something, you can bet your bottom doll that somebody else does, and it will not be difficult to get your hands on. So let the boxes go and create that space that you need in your house. Now we are going to pop to a break, and then we are going to talk about the more difficult matter of dealing with full boxes. Hi

09:35
everyone. Welcome back. We are now going to chat about what to do when you have full boxes, cardboard boxes that are full of stuff. They might be in your living room, they might be in your bedroom, in your basement, in your garage, in your room of doom, in your spare bedroom. They're lurking everywhere. How are you going to tackle for. Full boxes, because I know you're like, right? I hear listening read, I want to declutter the cardboard, but my boxes are full of stuff.

10:07
And what do I do then, exactly? And I think it all starts with working out a bit of a plan. So, you know, as we've said, they could be in all of those different rooms that Ingrid mentioned, and they could be in all of them, right? And that's the problem if we've got boxes everywhere. Because what people typically do, who have clutter that are reluctant to let go of stuff, we become very good at organizing our clutter. And so quite often, sometimes the boxes are in an organized state. They might even be labeled. We know what's in the boxes, potentially, but we've kind of organized and put them all together, we still ultimately need to let a lot of that stuff go, because we want to pare down, and we want to get ourselves to a stage where our stuff that we have that we choose to keep in our home is inappropriate storage and cardboard boxes, for the most part, are not suitable storage. We need to put things in cupboards, in drawers and all that kind of stuff we need to, we need to create a home that looks more like a home, rather than a storage facility, which is what it looks like when you've got loads and loads of cardboard boxes. Obviously there are, there are instances where you need to keep things in boxes sometimes, but we need to be working towards that not being the case. So I think it's really important to work out, what type of boxes have you got? Are you that person who has kept a lot of clutter and it's organized into boxes, so it's already kind of in categories? In there are these boxes that you've got from when you might have moved house, that you've not unpacked yet, that might be something. Are these sweet boxes? You know, if you're not if you're not sure what a sweep box is, what that means is that you've gone around in a panic one day when somebody's coming to your house, thrown loads of stuff in a box, and it's just landed there, and you've not got back to it. So sweet boxes and sweet bags are very common, and what they typically will be is full of random stuff and possibly stuff that you have lost as well. So are they sweet boxes? Are they already sorted out. Boxes? Are they? How smooth boxes? Are they boxes of paperwork? Are they boxes of sentimental stuff? Are they boxes of books? So we need to identify what is in these boxes, and how am I going to go about sorting them out? Yeah,

12:14
exactly. Of course. One caveat here, if you literally just moved house last week, and you've got a house full of 60 or 70 boxes, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking that then you need to do an unpack and just unpack after your house move. This is kind of all the boxes that, over time, have crept in, or those 10 or 20 boxes that never got unpacked after a house move. Those are the boxes that we're talking about.

12:39
I think the most important thing is that we need to lay the groundwork. We can't just launch into these things that are effectively out on the surface of our home, on floors, on same on kitchen cabinets, the same on floor, droves and chairs in your bedroom. We need to tackle what's in the appropriate storage first to make space for what's in the boxes. The stuff typically is in the boxes because there's no space for it to go elsewhere otherwise, potentially it might have already been put away. So we need to lay the groundwork down do the decluttering in our wardrobes, in our bookcases, wherever that might be, to allow us then the possibility of adding to that stuff that we've already kept with the stuff that's in the boxes. So we need to declutter the whole of that room first before we can start to tackle the boxes. Yeah,

13:30
because when everything is out, where are you going to then put the stuff that's going to come out of the box? Right? You need to have space to do this. And it ideally, it would be a table or something like that. But if, if that's if that's not an option for you, then you need to have space on the floor where you can go, Okay, I'm going to put this box now. I'm going to open it, I'm going to take everything out of this box, and I'm going to look at what is in here. But if you then find items you want to keep, for example, if you haven't decluttered your house. Where are you going to put it? That's what Lesley is talking about, and that's why it's so important to first declutter your kitchen, your bathroom, your wardrobes, your bookcase and all of the areas around before you can actually go Now I'm ready to tackle these 2030, 4050, boxes that are around my house, because that stuff needs to go somewhere. Because if you're going to open a whole box and you want to put stuff away, and you can't, then you're going to end up putting everything back in in that same box. Because you're like, I don't know where it's going to go. So you're just in a vicious cycle then, so you have to create space first before you can tackle what's in those boxes. Now, if you open a books, and for example, it's all books, you can immediately go, Okay, you take all the books out and go right. And you can go, what am I keeping? What am I letting go of? And then, of course, you know, you can immediately you do that. You did a. You first kind of sift of sift through of the items, some of the things you want to keep can then go on the bookcase, because the bookcase has space for the books to go. And the the books that you want to are ready to let go of can go to the charity shop or be donated so they can go into your car immediately and go, right? That's the box done. Bob's your uncle. But if you open a box with lots of different kinds of stuff, ooh, then you need to do other things, right? Lesley, yeah,

15:36
I think it's important, you know, whatever it is, I think we need to get to a stage, even if our home is still very full. So we were creating a scenario here where we declutter the rest of the house and it's opened up space for us now, more often than not, that's not the case. We may go through the rest of our house, we may declutter and organize, but it's still fairly full. So at that stage, we really need to confront ourselves or get the knowledge of what's inside the boxes. So even if it regardless really of whether it's a box with one type of thing or whether it's a box of sweet stuff, we need to open it up and have a look inside. And at that stage, we need to then, if we're not quite ready to put it, if it's a box of books, in that scenario, we can go straight to the bookcase and we can go, okay, will it fit on let's put it away. But if it's something different, we might need to gather like with like. And what that will then allow us to do is to go, Okay, here's a box of stationery, for example. Let me then go once it's once it's opened, and maybe, maybe you've got to open 10 boxes to gather all of the stationery from all of those boxes. And so you go through a sorting and gathering exercise, don't you? Ingrid, you're kind of like, okay, I'm not going to worry about putting anything away at this moment in time. I'm just going to open all the boxes, and I'm going to get myself to a stage where I've got lots of different categories, and those categories are likely to be things like stationery, things like paperwork, things like sentimental items. If you've got kids, it might be toys or stuff that belongs in their room. You might have some kitchen items, some random utensils that you bought. It could be anything from the rest of your house, right? It might even be clothes in there. There might be laundry, there might be bedding. Who knows what's in those boxes? Open the boxes, confront yourself to have the knowledge of what is inside. That's a really, really important step. We don't want to just ignore the boxes and imagine what's inside. We want to know what's inside. And so it might be that those cardboard boxes, actually, at this stage, don't get emptied and chucked away. They get emptied and then the stuff gets shifted around in them. So we might have all the cardboard boxes lined up and what? But now we're putting some order into it. So now we've got a cardboard box, and we're writing with a sharpie on the on the end of it, stationery stuff for Jenny's room, you know, clothes for the laundry. You know, we got different sort of things that we're going to section it all out. And then we can start to see it taking shape, because we can start to see this categorization, right Ingrid,

17:57
yeah. And I think that is key, because sometimes when you try to do one box at a time, you're like, but I don't know if I want to keep this because I've got another 40 boxes that I need to sort and have. I know I've got similar kind of stuff in there, but how do I know if I want to keep this one or the one that's still coming? So that's where the sub categorizing and the like with like will really, really help that without a shadow of a doubt, there be a box of paperwork that might even, you might even subdivide and go, that's paperwork that's opened and, oh, I'm going to create a box for paperwork. That's not the way the envelopes are still closed, because that needs to have a subcategory. So you start to create these more categorized boxes, and then you start to write on it with a sharpie, what is this stuff? And then you're ready. So very, very often this, this, this scenario is what happens. It's almost never like a box of books that I can do with in one go. It's almost always things that have been packed in a rush. Nobody knows what's in there. It's all kind of thrown in together. Or some people were helping you with a house move when life was really chaotic and there was no time to put it all away in boxes, quite orderly. So basically, people just walked around the house and kind of everything they found they threw in. So it you might, you might find the strangest things, but you also might some stuff you thought you'd long lost. Some stuff that's super important, some stuff that you're like, why was this packed up in the first place? But you know what? That's the thing. It's, a bit like a treasure hunt as well. But you just need to go ahead and think, okay, how am I going to do this? And of course, decluttering along the way is fantastic. If you see rubbish and things that are, you know, crumbled, you know, have a rubbish bag ready, a trash bag ready to put the stuff in. That can be immediately be recycled or binned. But then, of course, in the rest that you're like, oh, I need to look at this, because you're not going to probably test pens. In the middle of this exercise, you're just going to make a box with this is all loads of stationary. And then later you go through the stationary books and go, Okay, what's what here? How many pens? Let me test them, and is this table still working? And all of those things. But if you immediately see something is broken, you filter it out to save yourself work later. I think it's

20:30
really interesting and good. And this just shows, you know, as we're talking about it, you know, we started the beginning, said you need to try and work out what kind of boxes you've got. Then we said you can go one box at a time. Then we're saying, Actually, you need to open all the boxes to see what you've got. Every home and every situation is completely different, and that's why it's so overwhelming. When you've got like, 2030, boxes in a room, you're like, Well, I don't even know where to start. I've got nowhere to put it. So just to, just to clarify, again, what we're saying, because it is different, and you're going to have to work this stuff out. This is, this is the hard stuff that we do as professional organizers, right? Yeah. So we come in to a home where somebody is overwhelmed and paralyzed because they're like, I just don't even know what to do. I don't know what's in the boxes. I don't know what's what's coming out of them. So we're like, right? Let's and then once you start to open some boxes, it starts to unfold, because you start to get the measure of the type of stuff that's in there, then you can sort of go right, okay, so let's get some other boxes, maybe even some collapsible crates, which is what I use. I typically try and use a different box for sorting to sort of separate the cardboard boxes out. And so use collapsible crates to start to gather light with like, if you've already decluttered some areas of your home, and you find, you know, at the end of that decluttering session, when you're opening the boxes, give yourself half an hour at the end of it to go, do you know what I found? A whole load of stationery. Let me go to the other place in my house where stationery is and let me see whether there are any duplicates, whether I've got favorites, because sometimes the stuff that you've got out that you've been using is the older stuff, and then you bought new stuff that's gone in a box. You might prefer the new stuff to replace the old stuff. It could be anything, or the old stuff might be what's in the box. And you're like, I don't know why I'm keeping it, because I got a new one now, because I ended up buying a duplicate. And so there's any number of scenarios. So this is not straightforward, but I think the message here is, at some point you're going to need to do it, because the goal is to have no boxes, cardboard boxes in your house. And so whether it's hard or not, and how you choose to break it down, that's the goal that we need to be working towards, empty boxes of an absolute no brainer. Just get rid of them. As soon as you can get rid of them. You know, there might be a couple of iPhone boxes, but keep that keen. That's kind of simple. Just for us, it's just should happen. The fuller boxes are difficult, and there are so many different scenarios. But just you need to kind of think about it. You need to know what you're dealing with, and then make a plan based on that.

22:56
Yeah. And if you have a room that is absolutely chuck a block full of boxes, you're probably gonna need to stack them up a little bit, and I'm not talking about eight boxes high that they have a chance of falling over just one or two or three on top of each other. So you actually create a bit of space, and then you can have some place to work with. But you know, it's a process, and that's why decluttering the rest of your house is key to doing this. You have to have space before you can start boxes. And whether they're boxes or indeed, bags, it's a similar idea. It's mainly the sweet boxes and the sweet bags with loads of different things, those are the hardest things to do, because you're like, Wow, all of a sudden, you're confronted with 15 or 20 different categories. You're like, Well, why did it happen? Where is this all coming from? So it can be super satisfying as well. One start to things, start to find a home. You're like, I know where these items go. And then you start to kind of break the back of it a little bit. But until then, you're gonna have to just plot it through. And it's, it's, it's time consuming, so don't be daunted if it takes you, if this takes you a while,

24:08
absolutely. And just remember as well, if you want to delve in a little bit more into sweet bags, we have done several podcasts where we talk about sweet bags, so do check them out. And I know Ingrid will pop those into the show notes for you, because some people will be like, sweet bags. What's a sweet bag? So I hope that we've explained it a little bit, but we go deeper into in the podcast, we'll go deeper into why a sweet bag is not a great idea, and how to avoid them, because they just build up and build up and build up. Yes, so have we done the cardboard boxes just to sing with? This is the question. I

24:37
really hope so, because I really would be great if we can just recycle those empty boxes and create some space. So we hope this was helpful. Let them go, and we're gonna see you next week on the podcast again. So for now, thanks for listening.

24:59
Ta. So much for listening to the declutter hub podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to us in your podcast player so you don't miss an episode and we'll see you next week.
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