Creative Uses for Extra Cardboard

Almost every parent has been there before.  They give their small child a great, shinny, new toy for Christmas or for their birthday, but the child seems more interested in the cardboard box the toy came in.

And what kid wouldn’t be stoked about the huge (and now garbage) cardboard box the family’s new refrigerator came in?  For parents, the common question becomes why spend money on toys when the kids play with the boxes more often anyway?

But that resourcefulness that children have towards cardboard boxes seems to fade with time as they grow into maturity and begin to have their own children.  What use to be a giant cellulose home of adventure is now just an ordinary piece-of-trash cardboard box.

With all of possibilities that leftover cardboard still hold for a family, it is a tragedy that most cardboard boxes are simply thrown away.  The following is a list of some of the many ways that others have found to reuse their leftover cardboard boxes and containers around their home.

·         Repaint and decorate to create useful and attractive storage bins

·         Make homemade piñatas for birthdays or other celebrations

·         Decorate for use as a giftwrap

·         Make a cardboard jewelry box for a child

·         Build a fort or permanent play house

·         A decorated play area with cardboard floors for small children

·         Build a hand puppet theater stage and puppets

·         Decorate and paint for organizational boxes in rooms

By using these ideas and by coming up with their own ideas for how to use leftover cardboard effectively, an individual and a family will be able to save needless waste while creating useful items for the home.