Society today is one where we are constantly buying stuff, even if it’s just the essentials. As a parent, it started off with an endless amount of nappies that came in cardboard boxes from before my daughter was born until she was potty trained. When my daughter started eating solid food, we constantly had to throw away empty cereal boxes etc etc etc. I like to think I’m quite prudent with my shopping but even being frugal hasn’t helped much in reducing the number of cardboard boxes I was throwing away.
Now I am not suggesting we return to the use of non-biodegradable products. Rather I kept asking myself what else I could be doing with all the packaging I was throwing away that was made of cardboard boxes.
From the first day my daughter’s grip was strong enough to hold my pen, she’s not let go. Painting is one activity we’ve been doing since before she was 2 years old. This meant I had to have a supply of paper for her to paint on (amongst other things).
So, on one hand, I had an endless amount of brown cardboard boxes that needed to be thrown away. On the other hand, I needed some paper for my daughter to do her painting on.
One day I had run out of white A4 paper to give to my daughter and I had a just empty box of cereal. What did I do? I got my scissors out and cut the cereal box into two rectangles and I have not looked back since then.
I have found cardboard boxes to be great for my toddler to paint on especially as it doesn’t get soft from the wet paint. But most importantly, it solved one problem for me. I no longer have to throw away all my empty cereal boxes and packaging that was made from cardboard boxes. I simply cut them into square and rectangular shapes and keep them for when my daughter wants to do some painting. When we have guests over, there’s more than enough to go around. Here’s one for the environment. Now I just need to figure out what to do with all our painting.
Any tips on how to re-use cardboard boxes? Please leave a comment below
