Boxes, little boxes. And why you bought a barbecue

I used to have a cardboard box problem. I didn’t recognise it as a problem, I just had a lot of cardboard boxes. I’m a scruffy untidy kind of person and it didn’t worry me there was a pile of boxes (and other recycling) by the back door and a much bigger pile in the barn because, well, you never know when they might be useful. Occasionally they became “too much” and we’d have a bonfire and burn them, and that was a bit of a problem because there were so many and it took rather a long time.

The number of perfectly good boxes eventually going up in smoke was not the reason I started The Little Rug Yarn Company but it did offer a way my mountain of boxes could be properly useful rather than just being containers for smaller boxes and then satisfying my pyrotechnic tendencies.

Early Rug Yarn customers got their orders in the ubiquitous Amazon boxes, the box our pressure cooker arrived in, various wine boxes and a particularly large order let me post out the garden shredder box that we bought ourselves for Christmas. I was now beginning to have a problem – not enough boxes. I put out a plea on our neighbourhood facebook group and what do you know? My neighbourhood collectively had a cardboard box problem and you are helping to solve it. I’m collecting boxes every day now from businesses and residents and I’ve become a complete geek about how many cones of rug yarn will fit into each box and which ones qualify as small parcels.

And I’m back to stacking the small boxes in the medium boxes in the big boxes!

So if your Rug Yarn order comes in a medical equipment box it once contained stuff for the surgery, the Dryrobe box is because the cold-water swimming group has a new member and the Mini Flying Insect Kites box means the post-mistress is hoping for a breezy summer.

I can’t claim to be truly sustainable and ask you to buy a luxury like yarn but sending it out in a used box is a start, even if your other half is disappointed the barbecue box doesn’t contain a barbecue.