How to reuse cardboard boxes
I don’t know about you, but we always have an endless amount of cardboard boxes in our house. From the food shop to Christmas present buying and online deliveries, the stream of them is endless! I try to reuse these as much as I can, whether that be for crafts and making things for the children, using them to post my own parcels, or even using them as a storage solution.
Cardboard boxes are actually a great form of storage, what’s better to store things in than something perfectly square shaped?! It’s very convenient if they have a lid too, like these storage boxes with lids. Here are some ways in how you can use cardboard boxes for storing your own personal belongings.
Storing Books
If you have an oversupply of books then cardboard boxes are a good way to store some of them, whilst protecting them from dust. Our children have a lot of seasonal books that don’t get used for the majority of the year, like halloween themed books and Christmas books, so to keep them nice and protected, we can store them in a cardboard box in the cupboard, either with a lidded box or with a normal box and have the sides folded over. Double wall cardboard boxes are a good box to use for this as books tend to be quite heavy.
Storing Keepsakes
Have you ever got an endless pile of artwork that your children have brought home from school? I never know what to do with it all, but it breaks my heart thinking about throwing any of it away! A cardboard box comes in incredibly useful for being able to store all their drawings and paintings without them getting torn or damaged, and a cardboard box lasts forever when placed in a cupboard or loft space, so you know they’ll be kept safe for years to come.
Storing Arts & Crafts
Arts & crafts materials can get so cluttered and messy, from bottles of glue and paint, to stickers, pipe cleaners and pom poms. All of the little bits and bobs end up everywhere! A cardboard box with compartments is so handy for keeping it all in, we keep ours on a shelf in the upstairs airing cupboard right next to the children’s bedrooms, and then we are able to easily pull it out when we fancy an arts and crafts day. It also keeps it away from little hands that like to get things out and make a mess!
Storing DIY Tools
Every time I go to start a DIY project, I can never find anything I need. The rolls of frog tape, paint brushes and roller heads just end up anywhere and everywhere. I’ve started using cardboard boxes to place everything in and store it away nicely in the utility room, and it makes DIY projects so much less stressful. If I need to quickly touch up a wall, or make a start on a new project, it’s really easy to find what I need within a couple of minutes. I’d highly recommend it.
Storing Cables
Cables are one of the things I hate most about tidying up my home. Everything has it’s own charger and cables end up absolutely everywhere in every room of the house. A cardboard box comes in really useful for keeping them all tidied away, and you can group them together by device type or room so it’s easy to find which one you’re looking for! I also find it useful organising them inside the box by cable type, such as USB C, Type A, Micro C, etc.
Storing Files
If you work from home a lot, or are self-employed, files can be really difficult to organise. I’m self-employed and don’t have the space for a filing cabinet, so being able to store files in a cardboard box and stack them on top of each other, is a great office storage solution. You can label each box on the side and then stack them above each other so that you can easily pull out the box that you need, when you need it. They can even be stored next to each other on a shelf, and the best bit is that you can get cardboard boxes in so many sizes so you’ll always be able to find one to fit your needs.
Do you reuse cardboard boxes in your house? Let me know if you have any other great ideas on utilising them for storing personal belongings in below in the comment section.
