Boxing Day is celebrated quite differently in my house than it is in the United Kingdom. December 26th is the day I inventory and organize the Christmas windfall: the boxes, ribbons, bags, and cards.
I am a connoisseur of fine boxes. I was able to rescue the the prewrapped gold boxes from a slow death in a land fill. The green and red square boxes are mega finds; solid, noncollapsible and very well made. They are perfect to add to my collection of prewrapped boxes. The greyish box is of questionable quality, but noncollapsible; I have yet to decide if it is worthy of being prewrapped in an elegant paper, or merely saved for a Mother’s Day gift. I have mixed feelings about the red rectangular box. In its favor is the fact that it is made of 100% recycled material, but its fundamental flaw is that the lid is attached. Boxes with attached lids are an insult to my organizational abilities. Since the box is quite large, I have decided to overlook this faux pas and use it to hold all of my collapsible boxes that have detached lids.
The ribbons and gift bags are easy. I roll the ribbon pieces around an old ribbon spool, fold up the tissue, and flatten the bags and store them. That is unless someone has committed the deadly sin of attaching a sticker gift tag to the bag! Then I must go through the arduous task of carefully peeling the tag off. If more people would use their old Christmas cards to make tie on gift tags, I could be saved much labor!
I love getting mail, any mail, well almost. I think my pleasure in receiving mail goes back to the old days, (before cell phones and email) when my husband was a naval aviator, and our main means of communication was letters. But I digress, as much as I love receiving cards and letters, my cup overfloweth, when I receive a card that I can reuse. I have framed cards, used cards to make gift tags, and used them to decorated gift wrap. Even the ones that I cannot reuse, will be put to use for a while by my youngest son playing post office…seems my love of mail has been passed on!
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Rebecca says
What a fun post that reminds me of asking my mom once for assistance with purging my box storage area. She couldn't be much help because, as she admitted to me: "I have a bit of a box fettish, too."
Struggler says
Loved this angle on Boxing Day!
One thing I definitely need to get a grip on is my small (but growing) collection of giftwrap supplies. The boxes, in particular, are challenging to store – so I did laugh at your mention of the naughty box with attached lid 🙂