Get a trailer and boxes and get ready to move!

Life sometimes causes you to go through lots of different things.  It is amazing that school, work, or even relationships can have bigger and longer impacts that you might think on your life.  One of those impacts that can happen from an area that seems surprising is that they can cause you to move.  

Now for my life these areas have caused me to move many, many times and it has given me a good perspective on it.  I now have invested in some things that help make moving easy and it also allows me to help out friends as well. During all of these moves having a specific item has allowed me to be versatile and save lots of money by not renting vehicles. So what item am I talking about?

 

The item that I have found the most useful inmoving from one location to another was a trailer! Having a trailer has literally made my life so much easier and saved me from probably hurting my back a bunch of times. Why is that though?  Well the health benefits are really rather simple.  The trailer I have has a nice ramp and allows you to walk up into the trailer without taking steps or being at a steep angle. 

 

The ease of use allows you to walk up carrying cardboard boxes or even heavy furniture without stopping or feeling taxed by the incline.  This allows everyone to be safe and move with relative ease.  The trailer is also 15 feet long and 6 feet wide.  This allows me to put everything in it that I own.  No matter what size it is, it fits in the trailer without having to be put in an awkward position! No doubt just those little things are priceless.  I can also stack cardboard boxes on top of each other and tether them down with the sides of the trailer.  It is a wonderful ability and allows for maximum efficiency. 

 

Now the initial cost was actually not too bad. It was about the same as renting a truck twice.  Since I have moved 6 times and helped other move for countless times it has paid for itself several times over.  Now I purchased a used trailer so that is why I was able to get such a good deal, but I see them for sale all over craigslist and facebook marketplace frequently.

How to get rid of all those giant shipping boxes

Well 2020 sure has been a wild ride.  The job market is nuts, the economy is constantly shutting down and turning back on and we are all ordering more things online than ever before.

  I am finding myself just absolutely annoyed with all the ecommerce shopping and online purchasing because of all the excess cardboard boxes that are being sent to my home.  This is one a recycling nightmare and two it seems just completely unnecessary. So now I have developed a system to keep all the clutter out of my home and it sure was not the easiest thing to think of.  There are now two ways to do this and one seems a bit more wasteful but is also effected for those that do not like to use knives.

The first way to get rid of all those cardboard boxes stacking up in your home or garage is by simply cutting them into smaller pieces and recycling them.  That sounds really easy, but when the stack of boxes is 6x6x6 feet then it is a little more of a big deal than you might think.  The thing that shocked me the most is that cardboard is very dense and dulls most knives very quickly.  After researching even knives that have the best steels on earth sometimes start to dull after 90 cuts of so.  Now with 20 boxes 90 cuts happens really quick and that is with a 300 dollar knife.  So WOW that is pretty crazy and I always thought paper and cardboard was relatively weak stuff.

So I chose to use a nice fixed place knife that had 3v steel.  It is a steel that is tough enough to hit a staple and not chip, but has enough edge retention to do the boxes without dulling to the point of not being useful. I found that using gloves helped me from getting hot spots of blisters and being safe it took me about 30 minutes to cut them all up in small peices and get them in my recycling can.  There is also another way that I find more wasteful but still effective if you don't want to or are not able to cut up boxes.

 

Water is a great choice for cardboard.  It mositens it and allows it to be able to be folded. Now for giant boxes it is a bit tough, but you can leave your boxes out in the rain or hose them down and then go out and fold them up when they are wet to recycle them It is a bit messy, but it works!