I believe the world divides itself into two categories — the savers and the non-savers. As a saver I was doing ok. The margarine containers fit neatly one into the other, and you could accumulate hundreds of them before they posed even the slightest problem. And the popsicle sticks went nicely in a cigar box in the corner. But those plastic gallon milk cartons — WOW! they gave me a real problem.
When they first came out, I was thrilled. Not only did you get a gallon of milk, but you also got this nifty plastic container. Throw it out? Never! So I saved them, one by one. I would carry them down to the basement and line them up on the ledge. When I ran out of ledge, I strung them like beads by their handles on a rope. They looked like burned out Japanese lanterns. When I ran out of room on the rope in the basement and they started to accumulate in the kitchen, my husband turned on me, "What are you going to do with these cartons?!"
I couldn't come up with a reason that satisfied him. I realized my days were numbered — and so were my cartons. He took them all upstairs into a closet and created a wall with them using cardboard as mortar. He stacked them four high and four deep and then wrote me a note: "You have 154 cartons in the upstairs closet — enough is enough." He informed me that every carton from now on would be going directly into the garbage. How could this be? I thought he was kidding.
I tested it out by leaving a carton on the basement stairs. The next day it was gone. I tried leaving one on the back porch. Gone! He really meant it. Fear gripped my heart. It was over — curtailed! Unless...I could recycle them as soon as they were empty. Eureka! That was it! The first carton became a container for iced tea, the second for grape drink, the third, orange juice...the refrigerator was getting crowded. The fourth held sugar, five and six were salt and pepper shakers that cost a fortune to fill and needed three people to shake. I cut seven through thirteen in half and planted weeds in them. Fourteen through twenty were perforated and became strainers for every day of the week. I was becoming more and more creative and adventuresome. I made the kids shoes out of cartons twenty through twenty-eight and matching hats through thirty-two, purses for the church bazaar, a bird bath (for each bird in the neighborhood). There was no stopping me.
I cut some up and made jigsaw puzzles, ice scrapers, checkers, book marks, toothpicks, wallets. A water bed used up the next hundred. I added a room onto the house with the next 4,000. It was like a fever now. I couldn't get my hands on these cartons fast enough. The kids would complain, "Mom, we don't like milk baths, can't we use water like other children?"
It's over now. The kids have gotten older and are consuming less milk these days — seems they prefer Kool Aid. It comes in this great can with a snap-on lid that.........