My Water Box Cycle: Quick and Easy Storage Solutions

When we moved to this house, the water filter that had been provided to us from the organization Aaron works for, did not fit onto the faucet in the kitchen. Although we requested a different style  that would work in this house, we weren't approved for one.
That means we have to buy drinking water, because although we boil water for cooking and washing fruit, we can't boil all the drinking water that we consume. I wanted to show the chronology of how we use and re-use the boxes that we buy because I feel it is such a shame to use them only once. Although not ideal, the buying of water in boxes allows me to reduce the amount of labor that goes into running a home in Latin America. Additionally, I hope to show our children that even though we have to buy drinking water, we can re-use the boxes and bags that the water comes in. Whether we have a large budget or a tiny one, we can do our part to help the environment, by re-using or re-purposing items such as these.

New arrivals come wrapped in plastic.

While we drink the water, the kids enjoy coloring on the boxes; because, who wants to color just on paper all the time?

Opening them from above, I take the bags out and squeeze the last half a litre to litre of water out of the bags.

The bags are then stored and re-used on the children's water wall that we have made mostly with left over  plastics and a few funnels I found at what is known here as a "plastiqueria", meaning plastic shop.

This is the third box I have made and I took a short cut by using a previously cut t-shirt of mine. The t-shirt had been used as cover for my belly when nursing. The idea is to take a t-shirt and cut it below the underarms (so it's just a tank) and you just put it on underneath any blouse. That way any blouse can become nursing friendly. It worked great on here because it was tight enough that I didn't have to use the glue gun on the whole box, just on the edges.

I had run out of  re-purposed denim so I used one of Aaron's old cargo pants that no longer fit. It was not  suitable to give away because of the condition it was in. 

I thought it would be fun for the kids to have a pocket on the side of their storage box for treasure, so I didn't cut up all of Aaron's pants into strips this time. One lucky kid found some Canadian cash in that pocket!

These are the first two I made. The bottom box had strips added one by one and for the top one, I sewed the strips together first and then glued them onto the box.

The idea was to make them stack-able, so I originally kept one of the lids on the lowest box so that there was a bit of a raised edge at the bottom. But, there is only one kid out of five that shows the potential for neatness, so we ended up using all the boxes as pictured below.

Overall this is an easy way to spruce up a few cardboard boxes. I could have been more precise and made them less rustic looking, especially on the inside. However, as this is my temporary home, I didn't want to spend too much time on the them. When we do get to our less temporary home, I am going to try to sew removable fabric covers for my storage boxes. That way I can easily remove to clean them and possibly have different fabrics for different seasons. By upcycling the old fabric, there is a reduction  in what we throw out. This is just one way which we try to re-use and recycle. The kids love the cardboard boxes for various play and learning activities, so I don't feel so guilty about having to buy so many boxes of drinking water for family consumption.
Let me know what you think or post some pics of your recycling or re-using projects. I would love to see them!

LIST OF SUPPLIES:

Scissors

Glue gun

Glue sticks

Old fabric