You have moved: after months of preparation you have finally finished transporting your belongings and you are comfortably settled in your home with your things… and your pile of boxes!

What should you do with these boxes? Rather than giving them to friends or simply recycling them, here are a few ideas for using them as raw material for all sorts of projects.

Using boxes for storage

It goes without saying, but you still need to think of it before doing anything else with them.

You can use your boxes to keep all kinds of products and materials: food, decorations and clothes, documents and photos, children’s toys…

Important: remember to label your boxes before putting them in the cellar or attic, so you can find them more easily!

Using boxes for weeding

It may seem surprising at first, but it is a fairly widespread and wonderfully effective technique.

Your boxes can help you get rid of weeds. How? Simply by laying them around your plants and then covering them with mulch. The cardboard warms the soil and kills all the weeds around your plant without ever harming it.

Helping your seeds germinate in summer with cardboard

Another tip for gardeners.

Some vegetables, such as beetroot, carrots, cabbage and spinach, only germinate at around 20°C, so it is very hard to get them to germinate in summer… unless you know this simple but effective technique.

Sow your seeds and cover the soil with corrugated cardboard. Keep the cardboard permanently damp and weigh it down with a few stones. The constant evaporation of the water will keep things cool enough for your seeds to germinate. Remove the cardboard as soon as the first shoots appear, or you will smother them.

Cardboard crafts: cardboard DIY

Love DIY and your new home is still missing a few decorative items? Now is the time to recycle your boxes by decorating your new home.

Cardboard crafting means turning your boxes into genuinely useful and/or decorative objects. From a simple decorated box to a mini play kitchen for children, anything is possible.

You will find an incredible number of tutorials and unusual objects to build with a few recycled boxes online.

You can build a cardboard jewellery box

Or even a coffee table!

Delight your children with simple boxes

Here is a chance to spend an enjoyable time with your children doing something fun.

With simple boxes, you can build enough stories to spark their imagination.

From a hat to a castle or a treehouse, anything is possible with a little time and elbow grease. Your children will be impatient for your next move.

A cardboard car

For little (and big) children

You now have plenty of ideas for getting rid of your moving boxes cleverly. You will think twice about that pile of boxes and smile the next time you see one at a friend’s house.