Cardboard boxes can quickly pile up in your home during the holiday season.
Whether you’re receiving gifts sent from friends and family or ordering gift items for others, these boxes can easily take up too much room in your home. Knowing how to break these boxes down and recycle them can help you keep your home from getting cluttered.
Keep the following tips in mind on removing cardboard waste during the holidays.
Breaking Down Cardboard
When you don’t want to keep cardboard boxes around, you’ll need to break them down before either storing or recycling them. All you need to break boxes down is a box cutter or scissors, which you’ll use to cut through tape that holds them together.
Carefully cut through the tape on all sides of each box, so you’ll be able to flatten them out. The best way to flatten out any cardboard box is to open all the flaps out (bottom and top) and then collapse the box along 2 adjacent corners.
When you have your boxes flattened, you can put them away if you plan to use them later or put them in your recycling bin if you plan to recycle them.
Storing Cardboard
You might need to store cardboard boxes if you don’t have room for them in your recycling bin or if you’re going to use them later on.
You can easily store flattened cardboard boxes in a shed or garage until you’re ready to use or recycle them. To keep them bundled up neatly, tie them with string or twine while storing them. Just make sure that you store your cardboard boxes somewhere dry, so they won’t get damp.
Otherwise, you won’t be able to use soggy boxes or recycle them.
Recycling Cardboard
After removing cardboard boxes from your home and breaking them down, you can recycle them rather than throwing them in the regular garbage.
If your cardboard boxes have any wet spots, such as grease stains, make sure you cut these areas out with scissors before recycling them since damp cardboard isn’t as easy to recycle. When your boxes are flattened, you can put them in your recycling bin.
If they’re too long or large, you can fold them up in order to make sure they fit in your bin. If your area allows you to set cardboard boxes next to the bin on recycling days, you can stack larger or longer boxes there instead.
Breaking down cardboard isn’t just something to do during the holiday season. Keep in mind that you can put these tips to use throughout the year to cut down on cardboard waste in your home. This can help you keep your home clutter-free at all times.
