An Appreciation of Shoeboxes

In an average year I figure I probably get about a hundred boxes that originally contained something I bought.

One spring I got a bathtub. It was a very large bathtub and came in an even larger box. It was a fine, sturdy box that I couldn’t bring myself to recycle, so I spent an afternoon reorganizing the garage, installed it upright against the wall, and filled it with rakes. The following spring I mulched the garden with it.

After that I got a new tele, whose box was in the livingroom for months because the cats liked it for a while. They also briefly like the boxes that sweaters come in, and garden gadgets, and cooking doodads. But beyond cat entertainment, they are no earthly use at all because they open on the short end and are the wrong size for anything except what came in them. Some dreary day I will round them all up and get rid of them.

I also have a vast accumulation of tiny boxes that once contained small articles of jewelry. I don’t know where they came from. I think I have more jewelry boxes than I do jewelry. It’s a mystery. Sometimes other things come in really nice, stout or attractive boxes that I keep because I figure one day I will need just such a box. Stanley Tools has a whole series of such boxes. They slowly fill with felt pens and lost buttons, pennies and paper clips.

I have a great fondness for fountain pens. I get them from mail order catalogs and various websites based in distant places and they arrive in packaging designed to resist nuclear attack. The innermost container is typically a stout, hinged box of wood, plastic, or really nice cardboard with a fountain-pen-shaped indent in which rests the actual goods, couched in voluptuous satin as if it were the finger bone of God himself. The sad truth about these attractive, well-made boxes, apart from the fact that they are too nice to throw out and therefore accumulate beyond all reason, is that they are absolutely useless beyond their original purpose of containing a fountain pen.

The most extreme example of this was a fountain pen that arrived in a cardboard box the size of an overnight bag. Inside this was a snug flannel bag in which was nestled a leatherette box that looked like an attaché case. This contained a flocked plastic liner with a form-fitting insert in which was embedded an attractive wooden box with a hinged lid. Inside this tasteful reliquary lay, in a green velvet nest, accompanied by a brass medallion, a fountain pen. I bought this more than ten years ago. The reason I can discuss it in such minute detail is that I still have every bit of it except the outermost cardboard box which long since went to mulch the garden.

In stark contrast to this flamboyant excess are all the cheesy little boxes made in China with the packing material leaking out past the staples since they can be disposed of without a moment’s pang along with the cereal boxes, milk boxes, envelope boxes, tea boxes, and plant food boxes. I almost prefer these because of their blessedly short half-life.

And then there are liquor boxes. It's true I seldom actually acquire these with their original contents, but I do seek them out when I am in the process of relocating. They are fine sturdy affairs, essential for the moving and storage of books and other small things. A good liquor box is a perfect vessel for, say, a set of dishes, artfully packed with intervening dishtowels. Some are also sufficiently seamless so that a bathroom drawer or junk drawer can be tipped right in without fear of leaving behind a trail of bobby pins or machine screws like Hansel and Gretel after a trip to Walmart. Their fatal flaw, though, is that there are no two liquor boxes that are exactly the same height or width, so that stacking is problematical. This fault eases their trip to the recycle, but some still remain, freighted with small goods that never did get unpacked from two moves ago. They are sometimes interesting as time capsules but for the most part represent a cubic foot of space that would be better applied to some current purpose.

I sometimes long for a boxless world. But then I buy a pair of shoes and suddenly realize that were it not for shoe boxes, all would be lost, both literally and figuratively. I cherish shoe boxes. I repair shoe boxes. Without shoe boxes, how would I ever find my Christmas tree ornaments, rubber stamps, camera parts, leftover seed packets, ribbons and snaps, 5-year-old tax returns, pressed leaves, computer cables and printer cartridges, glue and touch-up paint, photographs and souvenirs, sandpaper and paint brushes. They are the perfect size for almost all objects in common use. They stack well and fit nicely on standard shelves. It is clear that some thought has gone into their design. Some come with a finger hole in the end so they can be easily winkled out of a tight formation. Many have a convenient hinged lid.

And soon I will have to find a suitable pair of sensible shoes to wear to my 45^th college reunion. My plan is to make the salesman show me every model they have in the place and then pick the ones in the best box.