Saturday, March 6, 2021

What's The Deal With Those Puffs Boxes, Anyway?

No, I am not saving Puffs (With Lotion) boxes for a major craft project. My collection of them has no purpose. It's not even a true collection. They are not displayed on shelves, nor arranged by color palette, nor stood on end like a mini faux Stonehenge. At the time each one was set aside, I had plans to throw it away. Really!

Here's the deal: my nose drips. Not constantly. But enough. More than enough. Especially when I eat, which I do more than occasionally in my dark basement lair. My mom had the same issue. Not discarded Puffs boxes in her lair. The drippy nose thing. She was always having to get up from the table for a tissue.

I don't blow my nose every time. It's just a drip. I dab at it. Eventually I'll blow. My need for a tissue is so frequent, yet so mild, that I tear my Puffs in half. That's all I need. Half a tissue at a time. It cuts my Puffs bill by 50 percent, you know!

While The Pony was away at college, I was left to my own devices to transport my supplies down those 13 rail-less basement stairs. A new box of Puffs could be dropped from above, to land on Genius's old desk, or skitter off. It's not like tissues can be damaged by a 7-8 foot fall. Getting the tissues BACK UP the stairs was more of a problem.

I have a large black trash bag in my office. I fill it as needed with my Devil's Playground shopping bags that I hang on a drawer knob and use for smaller trash. Used tissues. Losing scratchers. Nothing foody. All that goes back up on my tray. The main filler of my large black trash bag was empty Diet Coke bottles. I've cut back on my at-home Diet Coke. I don't add a bottle every day to my weakening 44 oz Gas Station Chicken Store magical elixir. I only use the bottles now (two per day) on days that I don't make it to town. Like during the icy weather, or when I'm busy making a holiday meal.

Anyhoo... those full black trash bags are awkward. As well as heavy if they have a lot of losing scratchers. It took at least a month, sometimes more, to fill a big black trash bag. Without The Pony, I had to lug it upstairs myself. That involved swinging it up two steps ahead of me. Balancing it with one arm. And single-leg-stepping up a step while holding onto the support pole at the bottom (for two stairs), then the floor above, and eventually the banisters. With each step up, I had to lift the big black trash bag up another step. It was a major undertaking, where I had to be cautious [Farmer H was still working two of these years] so as not to make myself business for the undertaker!

Back to the Puffs boxes... each time I used the last Puffs, I was in a hurry to open up the next box, of which I had stocked a spare. You never know when you might turn your head just wrong, eliciting a small torrent. So I'd set the empty aside, planning to unfold it and put it in the big black trash bag.

Well. There are more stimulating things to do in my lair with New Delly. I'd stay caught up in what I was doing, planning to deal with the empty Puffs box later. They're hard to break down, you know. That glue keeps the end flaps stuck on like...um...GLUE! Hard to pry them loose, but when you do, they will fold flat. I could conceivably unstick and fold down a dozen Puffs boxes, stack them, and they'd take up perhaps the space of a notebook. However... when put in a big black trash bag, they don't stay folded down flat! They accordion back to their box shape! Which is a bit awkward, taking up a lot of space in the big black trash bag, and poking their angular corners through the plastic. 

I couldn't just dump a lot of Puffs boxes in the big black trash bag early. If I waited until it was half full, they'd take up the rest of the room, and I'd have a heavy bottle-y ticket-y bottom, and a loose pokey-outie top. Awkward to wrestle on the steps. So I put it off. Some months I'd tell Farmer H that he needed to carry it up, when he was returning to the main level after stashing his Storage Unit Store money in one of the safes. Before he put a spring-action deadbolt thingy on the basement door, I sometimes drove T-Hoe around the Mansion to carry in my Diet Coke (12-pack cans then), and carry out a bag of trash. Then I could drive it around to the dumpster by the garage, and avoid the basement 13 steps, and the porch 4 steps.

Anyhoo... it's not hoarding, and not PURE laziness that had accumulated many a Puffs box for The Pony to shame me with while re-directing criticism over leaving empty food packs around the Mansion. 

It was just about 95 percent laziness. But hey! Now that I have The Pony, I might as well use my little beast of burden to suit my needs. He IS technically an indentured servant until he lands a job.

7 comments:

Sioux Roslawski said...

There's ANOTHER Rolling Stones song--"Beast of Burden."

I guess if you were next to somone who needed a tissue, you WOULD have a square to spare...

River said...

Your method of getting that trash bag up the stairs seems unnecessarily difficult. Why not just lean a little forward and drag/bump it up behind you?
After flattening the tissue boxes, you bend the folded bits in the opposite direction and that helps them stay flatter. Aren't the diet coke bottles plastic? They shouldn't weigh so much. And they can also be flattened by leaving off the caps and standing on the bottles. That's a good job for a Pony, but it is a noisy method, so have him do it while you are upstairs away from the noise. And then of course he can just hoist the whole business up with him when he comes back up.

Hillbilly Mom said...

Sioux,
That's the song misheard as "I'll never be your pizza burger!" Of course I could spare a square of PUFFS. That's their shape (while still folded in the middle), after I rip them in half to make twice as many.

***
River,
Oh my gosh! NO!!! Dragging that bag behind me would totally throw off my balance! Has Farmer H contacted you to assist in trying to kill me??? These are the great big bags, like Lawn and Garden Bags, I think they're labeled on the box. Not just a kitchen-sized wastebasket bag.

I'm not taking up origami to dispose of Puffs boxes. The Diet Coke bottles are not heavy at all. They just take up a lot of space, and shift around so that the bag seems alive. The loser lottery tickets are the heavy part. They certainly can accumulate over the time it takes to fill a large trash bag. I've never seen a plastic soda bottle stay flattened, unless a car ran over it. I can't fit T-Hoe into the basement!

When we used the cans of soda, Farmer H had a can-crusher thingy on the wall of the BARn. Or Genius would stomp them out on the carport behind the garage. You can fit a lot more into the trash bags that way. Of course, Genius got the cans to cash in for money, so he was on board to do this task.

Kathy's Klothesline said...

I have so much to say! Pinterest is what my daughters refer to as a huge time waster. I love Pinterest. You could just type in Puffs empty boxes and an insane amount of crafty ideas would pop up. Same with the Diet Coke empties. I used my plethora of empty bottles on my tool wall. You simply dill a hole in the bottle cap and screw an eye in. Starting at whatever level you might want, cut a hole in half of the bottle circumference and there you have it, a container to hold stuff, like screws, bolts, eyes, and nails. they can e hung n cup hooks or peg holders. I have an entire wall in my laundry room/ catch-all covered in peg board. You can see through the bottles and find the exact screw, or what not you might need at a glance. I am saving water bottles for just such a project in my sewing room. No more rummaging through boxes or drawers for me!

Hillbilly Mom said...

Kathy,
Now I feel guilty that I don't send my trash hoard to you!

Did you ever watch "The Office?" At Pam and Jim's wedding, the guests stayed at a hotel the night before. Kevin's feet stunk so bad that the hotel threw away his only pair of shoes that he'd set out to be shined. So he wore Kleenex boxes on his feet to the wedding. Here's a 5-second GIF of him dancing down the church aisle in them:

https://imgur.com/gallery/YyvZO2o

Kathy's Klothesline said...

I do remember that episode! Who knew Kevin was a DIYer!!

Hillbilly Mom said...

Kathy,
He was also good at making chili, just not good at carrying it into THE OFFICE!