We get packages constantly—at least two every day, sometimes more. It ranges from toilet paper and kid essentials to items I ordered at midnight and forgot about. All that cardboard used to go straight to the recycling bin. I’d flatten every box the same day it arrived. Then one day, I’m at Home Depot about to drop $30 on landscape fabric, and I’m looking at this cart full of cardboard at home, and something clicked.
I’ve been reusing delivery boxes for about two years now, and it’s saved me a ridiculous amount of money on stuff I used to buy without question.
Garden weed barrier and mulch
Turn delivery boxes into free landscaping material
Credit: Jonathon Jachura / MUO
I stopped buying landscape fabric the year I discovered cardboard works just as well in my garden. Now I just flatten whatever boxes show up, tear off the tape and shipping labels, and lay them down between my garden rows or around plants. It does the same job—blocks weeds, keeps moisture in the soil—and it breaks down naturally instead of sitting there forever like plastic landscape fabric does.
The best time to put it down is spring, before you mulch. I run the hose over the cardboard for a minute to get it wet. This makes it lie flat more easily, and it’ll decompose quickly. I lay some leftover fall leaves first to give the plants an extra layer of compost. Overlap the cardboard pieces a bit so you don’t get gaps where weeds can poke through. I do this in my vegetable garden, and I’ve got it around my hostas and daylilies too. Some inserts (like the one pictured above from ButcherBox) come with perfectly placed holes for my flower beds.
The cardboard turns into compost basically, adding carbon back into the soil. Earthworms love it. I haven’t bought a roll of landscape fabric since 2022.
Creative art and play station for kids
From an Amazon box to an art studio and fort
Credit: Aarthi Arunkumar/MUO
My kids are 2 and 4, and I swear they’d rather play with a cardboard box than half the toys we’ve bought them. I tape flattened boxes to the wall in their playroom or lay them out on the floor. We give them some washable markers (or Sharpies if we’re coloring outside), and they’re good for hours. We used to buy coloring books constantly, and they’d finish one in like two days.
The fort building is their favorite, though. I keep some boxes intact—different sizes work best—and they turn them into whatever their imagination dreams up that day. Tunnels, houses, spaceships, you name it. I’ll cut out windows and doors with my box cutter, and they go to town decorating with markers and stickers. Some of these forts stick around for weeks. When they finally collapse or get covered in too many drawings, we break them down and recycle them.
Doing this really beats dropping $200 on one of those giant play structures. Plus, I don’t even flinch when they color all over the cardboard—that’s the whole point.
Shipping supplies for online sales
Build your free eBay and Poshmark inventory
David Gyung/Shutterstock
MUO ShutterstockCredit: David Gyung/Shutterstock
When I was actively selling on eBay years ago, I learned pretty quickly that shipping supplies eat into your profit margins. Quality shipping boxes cost anywhere from $2 to $5 each, and bubble mailers aren’t much cheaper. I saved hundreds of dollars by keeping every decent box that showed up at my door.
This works great for occasional sales too, whether you’re decluttering through Poshmark, Mercari, Facebook Marketplace, or Craigslist. I flatten boxes and sort them by size in my garage. When something sells, I’ve already got the perfect box waiting. I also save the bubble wrap and packing materials from incoming packages.
Only keep boxes in good condition without rips or water damage. For most everyday items, a gently used cardboard box works perfectly fine and costs you nothing.
Moving day preparation
Stockpile free moving boxes throughout the year
Credit: Dwight Burdette/Wikimedia
Do you have a move coming up in the next six months to a year? Start saving your bigger boxes now. Last time we moved, I’d been collecting boxes for about eight months. Doing so kept us from spending $150 at U-Haul or Home Depot. That’s just for the boxes—packing tape and bubble wrap would’ve been another $30 to $80 on top of that.
The big appliance boxes are what you really want. They’re thick, sturdy, double-walled. Those hold up way better than the flimsy ones. Medium to large delivery boxes from retailers also work great. Small boxes aren’t worth the storage space since you can always get those from grocery stores if needed.
I flatten everything and shove it in the garage or wedge it behind furniture. Before that, I write the dimensions on each one with a Sharpie so you don’t have to unfold a whole stack later trying to find the right size. This even works for smaller moves—storage unit runs and helping your buddy move to a new apartment.
Storage space is the catch here. If your garage or closet is already packed, this won’t work. But if you’ve got the room and you know a move’s coming, absolutely do this.
Home organization solutions
DIY drawer dividers and storage containers
Jhet Borja/MakeUseOfCredit: Jhet Borja/MakeUseOf
Those custom drawer organizers at Target or The Container Store run $15 to $25 each. I’ve got a junk drawer in the kitchen, one in my office, and another in the craft room—that’d be $75 right there just to organize three drawers.
Cardboard’s free, and you can cut it to whatever size you need. I’ve made dividers for my junk drawers so batteries aren’t mixed in with pens and random screws. My craft room has boxes I trimmed down for ribbon spools and paint bottles. The garage has little cardboard sections for nails, screws, washers, and all that hardware that used to roll around loose in a toolbox. It helped me make my office more organized, too.
Dividers work for kids’ toys as well. I cut up boxes into bins for Legos, crayons, and those miniature cars that multiply overnight somehow. They get dirty eventually or start falling apart, then I recycle them and make new ones. This is way better than throwing out some expensive plastic organizer you paid $20 for.
Some people cover them with contact paper or fabric to make them prettier. I don’t bother doing that for stuff in the garage or inside drawers. Nobody’s seeing them anyway.
Recycle what you can’t reuse
Cardboard doesn’t last forever. Eventually, it falls apart or gets gross. Flatten it when it’s done, peel off any tape or labels still stuck to it, and dump it in the recycling bin.
Reusing boxes has changed how I look at waste overall, actually. Next time a package shows up, don’t automatically flatten it and recycle it. Take a second and think if you could use it for something first.
