There’s a crisis going on in the Sontag household. Yes, we, an
innocent family just trying to live our lives, are being
terrorized. We’ve spent countless days trying to rid ourselves of
this menace. But to no avail. In fact, the evil that permeates our
home has just grown.
There’s a crisis going on in the Sontag household. Yes, we, an innocent family just trying to live our lives, are being terrorized. We’ve spent countless days trying to rid ourselves of this menace. But to no avail. In fact, the evil that permeates our home has just grown.
Yes, we are plagued by the boxes of Christmas past.
Of course, there are families all over the country experiencing this. It starts before the holiday, with one or two merrily wrapped packages. But by the time the New Year rolls around, the boxes are empty and they are everywhere.
And there is no way to escape. I know. I’ve tried. In fact, I have established a box-free holiday household. I don’t use boxes, I only use gift bags. I love them. I put stuff in them. Other people take stuff out of them. Then I fold the bags, place them neatly in a suitcase and shove them under the bed so I can re-use them the following year. The only danger to me is that I will sneeze myself silly from the dust bunnies next year when I get the suitcase out from under the bed.
But the rest of the world uses boxes. And apparently they use lots of them. And this year I did something so foolish I might regret it for the rest of my life. OK, maybe until February. Or possibly just next week. But I do regret it.
You see, silly me, I ventured out to the Outlets Thanksgiving night at midnight. I swear to you, that is enough to scare the most experienced shopper away from a mall forever. I am seriously scarred for life by the things I saw that night. So this year, I shopped online.
Omigod. Do you know what a mistake that was? Online retailers must have their own box factories, because they ship boxes within boxes within boxes. I ordered a book for my grandmother and it arrived in a 2-foot long box, vacuum-sealed and cushioned in bubble wrap. For a book. And it wasn’t even a bestseller.
And the boxes just kept on coming. Rock Band arrived in a box taller than me. Inside that was another box. And then another one, this one filled with Styrofoam – another factory that the online retailers must own. A fire pit for my sister and brother-in-law arrived in a box the size of my front door. And heaven forbid the metal fire bowl be damaged, so it was filled with foam. My mother’s gift card arrived in a box, for Pete’s sake. A gift card. Couldn’t they have used an envelope?
And just when I thought it was over – Christmas was past, the New Year was here and the boxes were finished – and of course, that’s when Harry’s delayed gift arrived in three boxes so big we had to take them in through the slider. I’d love to tell you that he got some massive gift, but he didn’t. It just came in massive boxes. And now the house was filled with these huge, empty boxes. There were boxes in the living room. There were boxes in the spare room. I even found boxes in the shower in the downstairs bathroom.
And then I swear to you, the boxes started to multiply.
I don’t know how or why this happened, but it did. One day I could walk into the dining room. The next day it was filled. Another day I walked into my pantry and found boxes stacked neatly, blocking me from my beloved sour cream and onion chips. NOBODY blocks me from those chips. And after a shower one morning, I came downstairs to find the dog barking her head off at a bunch of boxes that had covered up her favorite chew toy – my new Ugg slippers. OK, maybe those boxes weren’t so evil, but still. Clearly the boxes had to be stopped.
So last night Harry and I went through the house, like stealthy hunters. OK, he was a stealthy hunter; I mostly tripped over the boxes and ate chips. But we gathered them all. And we savagely cut them into smaller, flat squares and set them out for the recycling truck.
And we rejoiced when the truck came to our home, picked them up and took them.
And I walked into the bathroom, opened the shower door … and a billion blocks of Styrofoam fell on my head. I can only hope that it’s recyclable.
