Pre-covid times you could always tell when Christmas rolled through. Trash bins were full of wrapping paper and bows plus those godawful plastic zip ties you had to hack off toy packaging. Back in the ’70s they’d haul two trash cans to the road Christmas week, crammed full to the brim with stuff for the landfill.

Thank heavens the recycling movement finally kicked in. Now there’s a Christmas-devoted recycling bin stuffed with packaging and shipping boxes galore. The waste is troubling but the idea that they’ll take those boxes and repurpose them into something useful is something. I guess. Better than sending it to the dump anyway.

But covid times have increased packages…tenfold? A hundredfold? I don’t even know what those numbers look like but I’ve converted a lot of shopping over to online so we break down a lot of boxes around here. Way more than a year ago anyway. And I suspect that’s the case with more than a few folks.

We’ve found a few other ways to handle boxes beside recycling. A couple have been used for cat toys for a few days before being banished to the bin. T-man was a bit confused at first but it quickly became clear how much kitties love a box – nothing like a nice snug hiding spot for those afternoon naps, I always say.

Interestingly the cats had two very different reactions to the gift boxes BrightSide put under the tree on Christmas Eve. Mia in all her cautious wisdom crept slowly around the tree, crouching down to see how these strange things might attack her. She was also pretty wary of the stockings. Not a fan of sudden or unusual changes, that one. When Seven showed up the next morning, though, he barreled his way right over the boxes and under the tree. He wasn’t one bit concerned about ninja boxes lying in wait, and by the time the kids showed up – after lunchtime, people – his shenanigans had scattered half of them.

And those are my box musings for today. Here’s hoping you’re finding a spot for all the boxes, big and small, that show up in your life.

Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “box.” Use it any way you’d like. Have fun!