Moving always means scrounging boxes from wherever you can in order to get all of your stuff from House A to House B.   In our case, we’ve been collecting boxes since before I left Channel 4 — paper boxes, Nexpress cylinder boxes, diaper boxes, etc.   We hauled a lot of stuff down to the Shefchiks’ garage in the last several months in those boxes.

Now we’re coming down to the wire and packing away a lot of stuff — anything that we don’t think we’ll need in the next week goes in a box.   Sarah sent me out on a box-hunting mission this morning.   My journey started and ended in Wal-mart’s customer service area.   I walked in and saw a shopping cart full of collapsed boxes that once had held bags of Malt o Meal cereal, asked if I could have them, and walked out.   I didn’t have to do a thing except load them into my car.   There were 23 24 of the boxes, measuring 20 x 13 x 16 and they’re wonderful for packing stuff in.

My favorite part of the story is that I walked past the shipping supply department at Wal-mart, where they sell (for about $5) smaller boxes than the ones they gave me for free.   That’s more than $100 worth of boxes that Wal-mart just gave away — you’d think they wouldn’t do that to avoid cutting into their own business plan, but I was a very happy customer.

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Update: I found another box upstairs that I’d started to pack in.   Count is now 24.