Adios, Old Boxes; Hello, New Ones

The best thing I’ve done lately was to get rid of all those boxes.

These were cardboard containers of the very best quality that I’ve been saving, some of them for close to 20 years.

I saved them because they seemed so useful. Also because I just like boxes. There’s something relaxing and rewarding about stacking them, nesting them, while they’re waiting to become useful.

The trouble with boxes is that they never really arrive at the point of usefulness. What they do instead is occupy space that would be useful for something other than boxes.

My place was beginning to resemble a box warehouse, so I took a deep breath the other morning and began carrying them out of the house. I even got rid of the Pennsylvania ones. They were such fine boxes. My partner ordered a set of pots and pans out of Canonsburg, Pa., and those vessels were shipped in handsome, sturdy containers I was truly pleased to have.

But there was no room for them in my closet. I might have stored them in the attic, except all the available box space up there is taken, mostly by the containers that the stereo and the computer came in.

Fifteen years ago, I rewarded myself for good behavior and presented myself with a nice stereo system. It came in four splendid containers, lined with plastic foam shaped to fit and protect the various components.

The fellow who came to set up the stereo said, “You want to keep these containers because when you move, you can take your system down and repack it the way it came from the factory.”

So I’ve saved those boxes, all this time. I have moved once since then but not very far, so I didn’t bother to pack the stereo. But I did move the boxes.

A few years ago we bought a home computer that arrived in five separate boxes, accompanied by an expert who unpacked everything and put it together and told us to save the boxes in case we ever needed to ship the computer off for repairs.

So the computer boxes went in the attic with the stereo boxes and the nice boxes that the pears come in that we order every Christmas from Medford, Ore., and the boxes for this and the boxes for that, including all the neat little bank-check jobs.

Ever since personalized checks were invented, I’ve saved those small boxes that the checks are mailed in. A neighbor told me such a box was perfect for packing and mailing a wrist watch. I could see he was right.

I always accepted any excuse for saving a box.

So I saved check boxes, I guess for 25 years, and in all that time I never needed to ship a wristwatch. Even if I’d needed to, I still had the boxes that my last three wrist watches came in.

Saving stuff that way is almost a curse. I once saved coffee cans - years of one-pound coffee cans. You talk about something that will eat space.

They’re worse than boxes, because they’re all the same size and you can’t nest them.

I don’t remember now why I saved those cans. They just seemed like quality cans that shouldn’t be trashed. This was before the recycling movement, so I let the cans build up in a garage closet and didn’t pitch them out until I couldn’t open the closet door without 75 coffee cans falling out and clanging across the floor.

The tendency to save trashy stuff may be an inheritance. Both my parents were savers, of anything other than money.

My father saved rubber bands. The last several years of his life, the newspaper he read was thrown rolled with a rubber band around it.

He’d take the band off and put it on the knob of a kitchen door.

He did that for years, until the knob disappeared and became a huge glob of stretched rubber bands the size of a softball.

After he died, the sight of that lump of rubber on the door always made me sad. So I resolved never to collect rubber bands, and I have not. I buy them instead, by the bag, so I’ll always have plenty of rubber bands on hand and no need to save them.

Hey, look what just now came to my desk via priority mail. A certain item I ordered weeks ago from a company in Buchanan, Mich. It was in a neat, tough cardboard box, too. Since I got rid of all that other stuff, I have some room, so I think I’ll save it.