Would you, could you, in a box?

I have a confession to make: when I worked at the institute, I would take things from the office. Don't panic—I had permission. I wasn't stealing; I was bringing home cardboard boxes.

I love boxes.

My first memory of my love of boxes comes when I was just little—probably three or so, I'm not sure. I just know that it was when the general store (“Old Clove's,” to my family) still had some sort of refrigerated shelving like you would have for meats and cheeses on the west wall, and I know for sure it was before my family moved to Moab and back. I turned four in Moab, so . . . I was pretty young.

ANYWAY, I had a small box that my mom had given me. It was small and flat—the kind with the removable lid that jewelry sometimes comes in. For the day that I had it I carried it everywhere with me and made great plans to find the perfect thing to use it for. Sometimes I put stuff in and took it out, but mostly I just carried this empty box with me. Until we went to Clove's and I lost it in the aforementioned shelving. I was devastated. My mom was unsympathetic. I did not recover my treasured box. Perhaps I've spent my entire life looking to replace it.

You never know when you'll need a box. They are incredibly useful when it comes to organizing things. If Alex and I weren't “poor college students,” I would have those fancy organizational boxes. But we're not, so I don't. That's okay. My bathroom shelves are in order thanks to some well-placed ramen noodle boxes. I keep my sheet music in a shoebox that I covered in old music. I use a blender box as a trash can in Melody's room. I load my closets with various boxes labeled to match their contents. It's a good system.

What's not a good system is the series of boxes that contain unsorted items that I'm not sure where to put them. So I put them in boxes and pretend that they are taken care of. Sure, I'll make it around to going through the boxes and sorting them into more boxes and eventually assigning them a permanent place, but in the meantime they merely provide a false sense of organization and a hiding place for my clutter.

I like boxes. Literally and figuratively. After all, isn't it “hip to be square”?

I need a bit of structure. You may have noticed that many, if not all, of my titles are some sort of recycling of other people's words. Cliches are my Achilles' heel (See? I can't even explain my feelings about cliches without using one!). I write “To do” lists and routines, if only to disregard them. I've been seen as a “good little Mormon girl” who has grown up to be a stay-at-home mom (with a blog, no less!) and I've tried to live up to many of the expectations that have come with those titles. The result: I take the traits and qualities that I've developed, re-box them, and give them a label that I find acceptable while discarding the less helpful clutter that comes with stereotypes.

“Boxes” have given me a way to put my thoughts and beliefs in order. And it works for me—as long as I don't use them as a permanent, disorganized catch-all. However, I have tried to keep some boxes that weren't benefiting me. I still have some. The good news is that I usually try to trade out worn boxes or boxes that are the wrong size for more sturdy boxes that better serve my purposes. And sometimes I just have to donate an entire box and its contents to the DI.

It drove Alex crazy right after we had moved to have me bringing home empty paper boxes from work. “Don't you already have boxes? Aren't you getting rid of boxes?” What he didn't understand, no matter how I explained it to him, was that these boxes were everything I wanted in a box. These were going to help me organize more permanently than the boxes I already had, so I was upgrading.

My Great-grandpa Farnsworth gave me some advice the last time I saw him before he passed away. “You don't have to pick up everything you come across, you know?”

Oh, I know. So when I do find something worth keeping, I put it in a nice box and label it.