You may be in the season of life where your parents are getting older and you’ve talked with them and decided that it’s not the best idea for them to continue living on their own, or so far away from you.  Either way, the process can be full of emotions and challenges that are unique.  It helps to be as prepared as possible when taking this under and, thankfully, there are plenty of resources available to help you along the way.

Here are is an abbreviated version to get you started:

1. People experience a range of emotions when it comes to moving, and most elderly people have been in their homes for a long time.  They have memories there, often of a spouse that has already passed away.  Your aging parent, even if they agree to the move, are going to need a lot of time to grieve and process their feelings.  Give them a hand in as much of the process as possible.  You don’t want to leave your mom or dad feeling like they are being stripped of all control as they start out their new life.
2. Set aside some time to really lay out the process in its entirety.  Know what kind of space your parent/s are going to be moving into.  Is it another house that is closer?  Is it an apartment?  Is it a room in your own home?  This will determine the extent of your downsizing and moving operation.  It would be great idea to print out a floor plan of the new place and help your parents decide where they will want to position their belongings.  This is the time you are going to want to start accumulating as many cheap moving boxes as possible.
3. Communicate with as many members of your family as possible about what is going to be happening with Mom and Dad, or Grandpa and Grandma.  Ask for everyone’s help.  The job is going to be much bigger than you think it will be (because it always winds up that way!).  Even the little ones can play a part by keeping their eyes open for free or cheap moving boxes.
4. Packing and Moving. Regardless of where your parents are going, even if its to another home in an adult community, the reality is that they are going to need to do some downsizing, to some extent.  Hopefully that pile of cheap moving boxes has been growing steadily.  There are so many different options for the actual pack-up and move, and those are readily available for you as well.

Let’s talk DIY storage solutions.  Everyone’s doin’ it.  That doesn’t matter to you?  Fine (also, I’m proud of you).  But that doesn’t mean that DIY storage solutions shouldn’t be utilized by everyone.  Let’s face it- storage is ridiculously expensive.  Most of us simply want we can’t have.  What’s the point of going into debt because of storage?  There isn’t one!  You can create your own storage solutions primarily out of recycled materials like cardboard boxes, and here’s how:

Project One) Antique wooden crates might make me break out in hives with longing, but I’ll be darned if I’m going to dip into my retirement to get my hands on some.  So instead of shelling out the cash, I used some sturdy cardboard boxes and an old sweater I didn’t wear anywhere to make an adorable nest for stuffed animals.

Project Two) Use your own cardboard boxes to come up with a tea organizer that fits easily into your drawer and also comes out easily enough when you have guests over.

Project Three) Use your empty disinfectant wipe canisters to make a hanging wall system.  Instead of me trying to explain it to you, look it up on pinterest and find tons of different options.  An easier project, using the same materials, is to cover one of the canisters with spray adhesive and fabric, and then use it to store your rolls of doggy bags.

Project Four) I’m pretty sure you’ve seen the PVC pipe shoe rock, and there’s good reason for it.  It’s because the system is freaking amazing, and is highly recommended.  If you have a whole mudroom you can even go up the entire wall and store lesser used shoes (like snow boots) at the top.

Project Five) Use wire mesh filing trays as a storage solution by screwing them to the insides of your closet doors.  You can fit a lot of obscure stuff in there that just winds up taking up room elsewhere, like hats and gloves and scarves or some sports uniform accessories.

Project Six) One of my personal favorites is using bulk spice containers to store batteries in.  These even fit perfectly inside of a refrigerator door if you are the kind of person who keeps their batteries chilled at all times.

Project Seven) I couldn’t end this post in good conscience without going back to cardboard boxes.  You can cover cardboard boxes with fabric, paper, paint… You can use chalkboard paper, label stickers, or anything other label available at your local craft store…

You can literally transform any kind of cardboard box into a solution for storage and be happy with it.  But don’t take my word for it!  Let Pinterest prove it!

I’m not gonna lie- I love organizing.  When I lived in SoCal it was almost beyond my comprehension, the amount of stores surrounding me that were dedicated strictly to organizing.  Stores like The Container Store and IKEA.  That you could walk into and be in for like three days.  Now I live in a little southern town at the southernmost tip of the state.  Needless to say, my options for organizing stores are Bed Bath and Beyond and Target.

Don’t get me wrong, I love them both, but they don’t quite stroke my obsession like I was used to.  Instead of trying to force something that isn’t there, though, I turned to something else: DIY storage.  Do you have any idea the awesome storage and organizational tools you can create using cardboard boxes?  It’s pretty stinking fantastic.  Here are just a couple of the ideas that I have used and fallen in love with:

1. Shoe boxes.

– By the time I am done here, you will never, ever, EVER throw away another shoe box.  A quick trip to your local craft store and you will have a storage system people pay good money for.  Decoupage the outside (which means “glue paper to it”), and then use adorable labeling stickers on the outside to indicate the contents.  Not a bit of this project will wind up looking handmade in any way (for those of you who don’t want your friends to think you are poor).

– Use a spray adhesive to attach gorgeous fabrics to the shoe boxes, mixing up the patterns so that everything coincides but isn’t too matchy-matchy.

2. Wooden Boxes

-You don’t have to stick with cardboard boxes, though.  You can go crazy decorating wooden boxes, and the plain ones from the craft store are pretty cheap.  High gloss paint and gold embellishments give you a box that could cost upwards of a couple hundred bucks in the retail world.  And why would you do that?  If you don’t want to go through all of the trouble of “finishing” the wooden boxes you can simply embellish them jewelry.  A gorgeous pin or broach over top of the latch takes the look from dollar store to couture as fast as you can heat up your hot glue gun.

3. Random Ideas

-Use puffy paint on your cardboard boxes to make your effect all-inclusive and 3D.

-You can make boxes from felt, with long, winged sides on the lid, of you can cover jewelry boxes with felt to get the same effect.

-Even if you have boxes laying around that you want to add some life to, give them a coat of spray paint and attach something to the top, like a figurine or glamorous rock.

Believe it or not, people do search the internet for tips on the best way to pack up their belongings.  Things used to be a lot more straightforward in the 80s and 90s, because things were a lot more straightforward.  Does that make sense?  The point I’m trying to make is that you didn’t need internet packing tips in the 80s and 90s because people owned a lot less, and their belongings were a lot simpler.

But what do I know… maybe if YouTube and Pinterest were around twenty years ago people would have been using them…  For now, let’s leave the past in the past.  Here are seven tips to help you with packing:

• Start by properly securing your cardboard boxes. It all goes to crap if the bottom is going to fall out of your boxes.  Padding the bottom and sides with newspaper helps with strengthening the bottom.
• Pack like with like and then label them correctly. There is nothing beneficial about throwing different stuff from different rooms in the same box.  And if you don’t wind up labeling what is inside of them you wind up with a bunch of heavy cardboard boxes and no idea what to do with them.
• Cardboard boxes are expensive! If you want to save money, leave your stuff in their drawers and keep the contents in place using masking tape or self-stick plastic wrap.
• Wrap your plates individually in paper and stand them on their sides. They stand a lot less chance of breaking without the weight of each other on top and underneath.
• This is one is my favorite: when you are about to tape your box shut, put a piece of string along the seam, with a couple inches hanging off to the side. When it’s time to unpack you can just pull the string and it will cut the tape along the seam.
• Did I mention properly labeling your boxes? I cannot stress this enough.  Label what room the boxes are supposed to go in your house, and what they are holding.  This way you don’t have to go breaking through all of them and moving them all around at the end of a long day/days.  Do I need to point out that the label should go on the sides?
• Do yourself a favor and start packing well ahead of time.  You are obviously going to want to start in rooms that are less important, but you will be giving yourself a huge high five when it starts getting down to the wire and you are ahead of the game.

Since recycling has become such a huge hit in the recent years, converting and upcycling items has also risen in popularity.  We have become so much more aware of how much of something we are using, and we are coming up with more and more alternate uses for something when we are done with it.

Perhaps the most popular thing of all in this entire scheme is cardboard.  More specifically: cardboard boxes.  Cardboard boxes are constantly being used to ship millions of items all over the world, and their use is so incredibly temporary.  But no longer!  You can do almost anything to them and with them!

1. Cards– cutting postcards out of cardboard is super fun and clever. People love getting them in the mail!
2. Plants– decorate some cardboard boxes and then line them with paper bags, fill them soil to use as pots for plants! Very boho.  Cardboard is also biodegradable, making it a perfect weed killer. Lay a sheet over a patch of weeds, water, cover with soil and seed and you will have great grass in no time.
3. Games– cut the cardboard into shapes and then paint them different colors.



4. Storage– there are a lot of ways to upcycle cardboard boxes into fabulous storage containers, but my favorite involves painting them, embellishing them with brass brads, and giving them a tall leather strap over the top. Cereal boxes can also become perfect magazine or file holders.
5. Pet-friendly– cut strips all the same width and then tape them together to form one long strip. Roll them together until you have a piece about the size of a plate. Your cats will go to town on this as opposed to your walls and furniture.
6. Play– make a maze by connecting all of the boxes and cutting doors in the sides, or use them to make play kitchens, trains, cars, or dollhouses. Anything!



7. Décor– instead of spending money on party decorations that you are just going to throw out, cut the shapes and designs out of cardboard instead. Looking for something more long term?  Prime and paint the lids to cardboard cartons and they look just like canvas art (which is much, much more expensive).
8. Crafts– By now you get the point that you can make just about any kind of craft out of cardboard, but my favorite is one I do with my kids: take cardboard rolls and cover them in peanut butter, then sprinkle with bird feed. Hang by a string from a tree and watch the fun!

Steph was surrounded by stacks and stacks of cheap moving boxes that had been filled with her belongings and taped shut and loaded and unloaded into this new apartment.  The point isn’t so much that they were cheap moving boxes, so much as moving boxes, but I know that she would appreciate some specification because she did a lot of searching to get the best possible deal and she wound up feeling pretty satisfied with the results.  So there you have it.  Shameless plug.

She didn’t know where to start unpacking.  She wanted to get to her books, but her books were at the very bottom of the stacks because they were the heaviest, and she wasn’t going to unstack the stacks and wind up with even less available floor space.  Except the stuff at the top was all the boring stuff, like the junk drawer and important papers.  She couldn’t even do anything about that until she got her desk, and she couldn’t get her desk until she opened up more space for somewhere to put it.

As she considered this dilemma, Steph saw a shadow pass by her door.  She didn’t know why she even noticed it at all, until she realized she had seen it several times before.  It wasn’t that the first time had caught her attention, but that her brain was causing her to be aware that it had already happened multiple times and she hadn’t thought anything of it.  Well, apparently her brain thought that it was time (to think something of it, I mean).

“Hmm,” Steph mused to herself.  Should she open the door and check it out?  What if it was someone else waiting around for one of her new neighbors.  What if it was some creepy ex-boyfriend whose girlfriend had moved out of the apartment, but who still waited around in case it was all a ploy to shake him off her path?  Steph shuddered.  She knew she was getting herself worked up over nothing, but then she got herself worked up even more because it occurred to her that those types of crazy and tragic things actually did happen to actual people.  And those people always said, “You just never think it’s going to happen to you.”

Steph stood up and walked past the first stack of those cheap moving boxes (there it is again.  I couldn’t help myself).  She walked past the second one.  The shadow outside of her door had stopped.  Right in front of the door…

I was cleaning out my attic the other day and I came across this screen-play that my older brother must have written when he was about 12 years old.  He has always been a kind of Indiana Jones, Star Wars, 007 type nerd (no offense), and it made complete sense that he would have delved into the world of “fan fiction”.  I never understood to what depths his passions ran, and then I read this:

• Def Con Shipping Boxes
• By Andy Pandy
• Act One
• Scene One

Scene opens on a ship yard, with rows and rows and shipping boxes.  Duke Nightwolf comes racing around the corner, holding a nine millimeter pistol and sweating.  He has a cigar hanging out of his mouth, and he is wearing a sharp black suit with a red tie.  He is very handsome.  He skids to a halt behind one of the shipping boxes and takes a drag from his cigar.  He closes his eyes and nods approvingly.

Nightwolf:  “Nothing like a Cuban.”  And then, “Crikey!” when a bullet goes ricocheting right by his head.  He tosses the cigar down, grinds it out with the heel of his expensive Italian shoe, and takes off running again.

The shipyard is like a labyrinth of shipping boxes, and the bad guys are chasing Nightwolf relentlessly.  Sometimes they are just a turn away, but Nightwolf always manages to throw them off again.  Up and down the rows they go, hour after hour.  Nightwolf occasionally stops to light up another cigar or check his cellphone.

The camera pans out from Nightwolf’s face.  He is on the phone with his girlfriend.

Nightwolf: I told you, Moonbeam, not to mess with the tiger.  It’s not house-trained yet.”  And then, “Gotta go, sugar.  I’ll be home for dinner.” Because a helicopter is flying overhead.  It’s Grimm Flintlock.  Impatient with his henchman, he had decided to take his personal helicopter to the shipyard and find Duke Nightwolf himself.

Over a loudspeaker, Flintlock shouts down from the helicopter: “If you want the job done correctly, you’ve gotta do it yourself, right Nightwolf?”  He is wearing black sunglasses and a bright yellow polo T-shirt.

Nightwolf mimes that he can’t hear Flintlock.

Flintlock: “I said, if you want the job done correctly…IF YOU WANT THE JOB DONE…”  Nightwolf is still miming that he can’t hear.

Nightwolf looks down at hand, which is holding his cellphone, which is vibrating.  The caller ID reads: Grimm Flintlock, Professional Jerk.  He answers it.

Nightwolf: Flintlock, my old friend…

In part one of “How to Make Chocolate: From Cocoa Powder to Candy Boxes” I spent the first half of the post talking about how unfortunate it is receive a gift that really isn’t any fun to receive (AKA five dollar lotion from Wal-Mart).  Then I elaborated on the one gift that is always well-received, which is homemade chocolates and/or candies.  Seriously, though, if it’s your coworkers birthday or if someone is graduating, either of these people and anyone in between would be elated to unwrap some homemade butterfinger bites (which I explained how to make in the first post).  I made sure to emphasize the importance of presentation, which means that you should use real candy boxes instead of Ziploc bags, which will really just send your giftees over the edge with appreciation.

Then I gave the recipe, and then I promised to write more recipes in part two of “How to Make Chocolate: From Cocoa Powder to Candy Boxes”.  Which is this one.  And so, without further ado, some more chocolate recipes:

Copycat Three Musketeers: melt eight ounces of chocolate (I talked about how I do this without burning the chocolate in the first post).  Then melt seven ounces of marshmallow crème and stir it into the melted chocolate chocolate.  Spread into a loaf pan lined with wax paper or sprayed with nonstick.  Put in the refridgerator until completely cooled, and then cut them into equal sized bars (you will probably get six if you are going for regular sizes).  Melt eight more ounces of chocolate and dip each bar into it.  Place on a prepared baking sheet and refrigerate until set.

Homegrown Rock Candy: Yes, I said homegrown and not homemade.  Tie a piece of yarn to a butterknife and rest the knife over the top of a jar so that the string hangs down almost to the bottom.  Boil some water, and then start adding sugar.  Add sugar until it won’t dissolve anymore.  You have to get this part of the process or you can’t grow the rock candy.  Add a couple drops of the food coloring of your preference, or you can leave it clear if you are boring like that.  Pour the solution into the jar, and then set it somewhere where it wont be messed with for a few days (I recommend covering it with a paper towel to keep dust from falling in).  Check on it every day, without touching it, and you can watch the progress of the crystals climbing the yarn as the water evaporates.  So cool!

[Don’t forget to packaged everything in the candy boxes as soon as it is done, to avoid any unnecessary and heartbreaking disasters!]

Everyone likes to get gifts, and if you say you don’t than you are lying.  We may not all like to sit there and open presents in front a crowd (I know that I certainly do not), but receiving something in general is a different story.  One thing that can be awkward about being on the receiving end is when someone has gotten you something you really aren’t interested in.  Of course we must still express gratitude, and it’s a good idea to dig down even deeper and actually feel thankfulness, but some five dollar hand lotion from Wal-Mart is hard to be truly thankful for.  You know something that anyone can be thankful for at any time?

Homemade chocolate.  Without a doubt.  Here are couple different easy chocolates that you can make in a few steps:

[First of all, make sure that you don’t forget the candy boxes!  All that hard work will lose a lot of its impact if the presentation is just a Ziploc babe.  Don’t worry, you can find candy boxes for pretty cheap at a craft store.]

Homemade Butterfinger Bites: melt one pound of candy corn in the microwave, starting with one minute and then stirring it every fifteen seconds until is melted through.  Add a sixteen ounce jar of creamy peanut butter and mix well.  Spread this mixture into a 9X9 pan lined with wax paper.  Put this in the fridge and let it cool completely.  Cut into bite-size squares.  To melt the chocolate I put a glass mixing bowl over a saucepan with some water in the bottom.  As the water begins to boil it heats the glass bowl, which allows the chocolate to melt evenly and slowly.  So once you’ve melted sixteen ounces of chocolate dip the little squares into it and lay them on waxed paper to harden.  Ah-mazing!

I will go over some other recipes in the second part of this post.  While you are waiting for your candies to set, go ahead and get your candy boxes ready.  Once the candy is ready to be packaged its good to just get it boxed up so that nothing unfortunate winds up happening.  But be careful, don’t go to package it too soon or you will ruin the candy!  Then stack the freshly loaded candy boxes in another, bigger box until you are ready to hand them out.  Or, if you’ve gotten good enough, sell them (wink wink).

Boxes come in and out of our lives at random, but it seems safe to say that there is always a steady supply of them.  If the food processor isn’t needing to be replaced you’ve got diaper boxes in and out every couple of weeks.  Or maybe you buy supplements from Amazon, or use the Amazon pantry.  Odds are that most of the boxes coming in and out of your house are shipping boxes.

Nowadays, people are really into a little thing called “upcycling”, which is where you take something that is not glamorous and you make it more glamorous.  (My dad would have probably called this something else, but it would be far too crude to put in a blog post.)  So instead of tossing out those shipping boxes, or throwing them on the burn pile, here are a few simple way you can upcycle them and use them for something different:

• Perhaps the most surprising idea for me was making window valances out of cardboard. They looked surprisingly charming! (If you are a window valance type of person). Wrap them in a heavy quilted fabric, dressed up with some shiny brads, and you would never be able to guess the humble beginnings.
• The most obvious way to upcycle boxes is to turn them into better-looking boxes, of course. Use wrapping paper, vellum paper, ribbon, or quirky ducttape to wrap around the box until it has been completely disguised.  Glue beautiful fabrics to the inside and outside, using cord to disguise the corners.  If that exceeds your expertise, wrap them in some rope.  The results are shocking.
• One of my favorite ideas is a homework caddy. Take a cereal box, a noodle box, and a granola bar box and tape them all together.  Cut off the tops in staggered heights, and then in the last box, the shortest and fattest one, put toilet paper rolls to use for holding pens, markers, and scissors.  Use colorful duct tape or glue a pretty ribbon around it and you could swear it came from Target.
• Last but not least, it is a growing practice to make actual furniture out of cardboard. From headboards to nightstands to side tables, from lamp shades to the window valances I listed above, you could probably furnish an entire bedroom from shipping boxes.  Although I would recommend that you stick to conventional mattresses, for everybody’s sake…