What to do with all those darn Girl Scout cookie boxes...

So with Girl Scout cookie time going strong, you might have seen some girls hanging around looking like this:



 



 

For every group of girls you see hanging around at the grocery store like that, is a parent or two who has a wall or walls that look like THIS in their house:

 

If you are one of these families who inherits the job of holding on to thousands of boxes of cookies for a month or two each year, then you might consider each year what to do with all those case boxes when the cookies are all picked up and purchased.

For a couple years we saved the boxes and stored them... Then when the kids were bored sometimes they would go upstairs and use them as blocks to make houses and towers and other such building projects. I eventually got tired of the boxes of mess everywhere upstairs, though and broke them down. Marley, 7, still misses these days sometimes.

This year when all those boxes arrived, I was going through a bit of an overhaul of my home. We are going to be putting our house up for sale soon, and we have been trying to declutter. That gave me the idea of finding a use for these boxes. They are small but VERY sturdy.

My project for the boxes that I kept this year is THIS. First I measured the boxes to see which size box fit where I wanted them to go. Cookie case boxes come in different sizes, if you didn't already know this. Then I tore the top flaps off the boxes.

  Next I spray painted them. As with all paint projects, I applied spray primer first. Then after this dried I added the color I wanted.

 After the color paint dried, I measured the box sizes for fabric, making sure the fabric was extra long so it would hang over the box. And I have fancy storage boxes. These red ones hold Marley's Polly Pockets and Petshops. NOTE: Without the fabric there would be small holes in the bottoms of the boxes that would let small objects seep out.

These boxes sit in my dining room bench to collect the books the kids leave on the table.

Girl Scouts is all about conserving. Conserving energy, water, time, etc. So all these left over boxes, even when recycled, are being just wasted. Why not put them to good use? What other ways can you think to use these boxes? I have a friend who uses them in her gardening projects with her scouts.