Guest post from Lucky of Making My Own Luck
This is the life-cycle of a cardboard box in our very frugal household!
Day 1:
The Amazon deals posts on Money Saving Mom have turned me into a fan of the Fisher Price Happy Days and Happy Nights diapers. I used to love Pampers but my baby’s chubby thighs fit in the Fisher Price diapers better. I order them through subscribe and save, and they come every month like clockwork in a great big box.
I’m working from home when I hear the delivery truck chugging up the hill and the telltale thud of the box on my door step. I lug the box into the house, take the diapers out of the box, and put the diapers away — leaving the box in the middle of the living room floor.
The baby plays on the floor while I work in the kitchen. I look up. Where’s the baby? Inside of the box, laughing happily.
Day 2:
My 3-year-old wakes up at the crack of dawn asking to paint something, play with play dough, go to the park, wash the car, and make a birthday cake all at once. I ask him if he would like to color on this nice box instead.
He claps and gets to it. The box has now been transformed from a low budget play pen to a race car. I enjoy my coffee while helping him draw racing stripes on the side.
Later, he asks me to ride in the car with him. While he’s pretending to strap me into my car seat, I crash through the back of his race car/cardboard box. He gets out his play tool box and spends a long time with his saw and a roll of tape playing auto mechanic. The race car is as good as new.
That night as I’m getting ready for bed, I see that the cat has decided to take over the box and is curled up in a big gray lump, and dreaming kitty dreams.
Day 3:
The kids have moved on to playing with canning rings and empty milk jugs. As usual, most of their actual toys go unused. It’s my turn to use the box and I stuff it with outgrown clothes for next spring’s consignment sale.
I challenge you to find me any “real toys” that could have this many uses!
Lucky is the mother of two young kids and a carb-intolerant kitty. Read about her adventures of balancing kids, work and life with making her own bread at Making My Own Luck.
Whenever someone is wondering aloud what to get their child for a present (B-day, Christmas, whatever) Hubby always tells them to just get the biggest box they can find and the kid will play for hours. It’s true! lol
Love this! My kids LOVE packages – for the boxes of course. We have a few out downstairs right now!
Just curious, has anybody been working the Happy Rewards program that comes with the Fisher Price diapers? I did them with my toddler’s diapers last year, and recently when I sent in my redemption check again for 300 points I got a $30 voucher to spend at Kroger on any Fisher Price items. The drawback was that the Kroger stores in my area doesn’t seem to carry Fisher Price diapers anymore, so I had it back and ask for one that could be used at Toys R Us. They did work it out for me, but I was wondering if anyone takes part in that program anymore because when I called the customer care hotline it seemed not many people at Fisher Price itself even knew the Happy Rewards program existed.
Really cute post! My kids love empty boxes and low-cost, non-toy items too, often over their store-bought toys.
Oh my gosh. Day three made me laugh out loud. Every day is “day three” in my house… 😀
When my kids were little, I kept a box on the top shelf in my kitchen. It was filled with empty containers and lids, egg cartons, plastic coffee buckets, and just about anything I could keep and wash out. That was their ‘toy box’ while I cooked supper. 😉
Now that they’re bigger, boxes are Puppet Theaters!
http://momsfrugal.blogspot.com/2011/12/homemade-puppet-theatre.html
I still have a box from my childhood. It had a divider in the middle and I made it into a dollhouse – you can still see the refrigerator and stove I drew on it in the kitchen area.
This is such a great post! I agree – cardboard boxes are one of the best toys ever. Last week my daughter pulled a huge box out of the garage (they used it last Fall as a fire truck) and positioned it under the clothesline. She threw a blanket over the clothesline and made a pirate ship to play in with my younger two. Later she stuck a tomato cage in one side as a “canon,” and they launched beach balls out of it. I LOVE seeing my kids be creative like that! 🙂
Check out Caine’s Arcade! It’s pretty much one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen a kid do with cardboard boxes.
http://cainesarcade.com/
Ditto – I was just about to copy that link in here. 🙂
A cardboard box turned into over $100,000 for this kid. 🙂
I was going to post that link too! My husband shared it with me a few days ago. I was crying at the end – happy tears 😀
Mary Ellen
The Working Home Keeper
Each year we brainstorm for ways to fill our Spring Break with creative activities for our kids. Last year my husband stopped by the appliance store and filled the truck with washer boxes. We had a wonderful time making a clubhouse. Even our collie enjoyed the boxes! Velveeta boxes and a few silk flowers make great window boxes and a small square box makes a wonderful chimney.
A large put it together microwave yourself microwave cart box. I wonderful photos of my Dad and my son and the bucket of crayons drawing on it.
Wax boxes were used for sledding.
Those of you who love this should check out the book Christina Katerina and the Box, which is about a little girl doing exactly this until the box (which is a race car, a ballroom floor, a castle, etc.) basically dissolves:). I hope people can find a used copy like I did because the new prices on Amazon are crazy. It’s a beautiful book, though.
http://www.amazon.com/Christina-Katerina-Box-Patricia-Gauch/dp/0698116763/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1334455845&sr=8-1-spell
Cardboard box, all the other goodies already mentioned, old pot with wooden spoon. Beats any store-bought toy, hands down! My 2 year old grandson loves my tool-box (unfortunately within his reach). His favorite thing is the hammer and a small piece of 2 x 4 with a nail partially nailed in.
My 17 month old loves hangers!
thanks for your post. so many box memories. also love the comments – filled with additional creative box uses (and sources). enjoy!
We are renovating and I have dibs on any large appliance boxes to make a pirate ship out of for my son’s birthday in May. I bet it’ll be the hit of the party and put those pricey moon-bounces to shame!
My kids are all grown now (21, 24 & 25), but they LOVED appliance boxes when they were little. They still tell stories about all the boxes they had. My brothers worked at an appliance store and would put boxes from the floor samples on the loading dock for me to pick up. When we moved to another state, I called an local appliance store and had another endless supply of free boxes. They only needed my help to cut doors and windows.
How funny would it be to give a toddler a box of random things (canning rings, cake icing jars, tape, crayons, junk mail) for their birthday! I bet they’d play with it more than any other gift! LOL
I have fond childhood memories of a rocket ship my mom created out of a refrigerator box. Boxes are great.
Very cute! We got a new dishwasher and I cut a door, windows, and serving window into it. The kids played in that thing for 5 months until we built them a playhouse out of wood 🙂 The braces for the machine made great swords too. Several years ago I used some to make fencing for a music program as well. We pay for those boxes and packaging so we might as well make good use out of them. LOL
Oh yes, the best toys are always boxes, rocks, sticks, ropes, bricks, buckets and old spoons, trees, etc. And of course my stuff that’s not theirs, of course!
So true!
Especially the cat!
I love this. My daughters favorite toy was a box. One day it was a castle the next something else. Even better for me it was free. Love it.
Haha! Loved this post!
Our favorite thing to do with cardboard boxes is to cut them to create a large ramp. We tape it to a table or a chair and my daughter races her hot wheels down them, or rolls balls down them. We made a large car garage to go over the ramp last week, and it stayed in the middle of the living room for a week and we got a lot of fun hours out of it 🙂
I have fond memories of playing in the moving boxes. (My dad was in the military so we moved every 2-3 years). Additional ideas:
– Open it up flat and draw a “city” for your kids to drive their cars on
– This may worry the moms, but I promise we were fine. The three of us kids used to crawl in the box, fold the top close and then roll each other around the yard in a low budget roller coaster.
– Cut it up for shapes (good for adults too! I’m using the box a wedding gift came in to make arrows to the house for the rehearsal)
My kids love to roll down our hill and around the yard inside boxes too! 🙂