Children and boxes

[Provencalroseparadox]

OK have never ever started an AIBU thread before but this has seriously pissed me off. AIBU to get annoyed at bloody children ripping a box open rather than asking me to help them open it properly so we can resue it? I have felt tips and pencils and various other craft items rolling around the bloody craft drawer because the kids have destroyed the box. Yes I know I could use a tupperware but surely that's not the point when the box would have sufficiently sufficed?

So AIBU? Should I just get a life and stop sweating the small stuff?

Ha. I always rip open the bread. Dp goes nuts. Yabu!

Agrestic as in the packet of sliced bread or something more artisan? Or the bread itself. Apart from the sliced bread I am more comfortable with this. Still annoyed by the box ripping incident earlier tonight though.

Depends what sort of box it was. Beautiful thing from Paperchase, I would be annoyed. Box that used to contain the school shoes from Clarke's, not so much.

Do you mean that you would keep felt tips in their original cardboard boxes if the boxes were intact, or that you would use the boxes for something else? If it's the former, then YABU - who wants to feed pens or crayons back into a space that only just fits them all in, and if you have more than one set, you have to separate them out at the end and post them all in individually at the end - couldn't be buggered I'm afraid, just get a pencil case for them.

Yes the box that they came in. Why would I keep them anywhere else? Then I can tell that we have them all and haven't lost any.

YADNBU! DH did this once, shocked him when I was like "noooo!", didn't even occur to him not to rip it open

I think it's more convenient to chuck all pens, pencils, crayons in one big box rather than seperating them all into their original boxes.

YANBU to want to reuse them and save waste though.

I like things to be neat and together. The DCs want instant gratification. And never the twain shall meet.

Why would I keep them anywhere else?

As I said - because slotting pens and pencils back into their original packaging is time consuming and more fiddly than just chucking them in a pencil case, but then I don't care if one has gone missing, so perhaps we have different goals for the tidying up process. I want everything put away asap, not to count them back in to ensure they are all there (cf the inordinate number of crayons, pencils, pens and mystery paraphernalia under the dresser in my kitchen!).

Yes! My DC do this with cereal boxes - they rip open the top so it doesn't fold down properly and it drives me nuts.

I think you've just summed up the paradox of parenthood in three sentences Provencal. Unfortunately it is us who must learn to live in chaos because let's face it, the messy little bleeders will never learn to be neat and tidy (which is, as we all know, the correct way to live)!

Mine all sit in boxes... Any size they will squeeze in... If its too small for the humans the cat gets it.

Ds1 is currently saving up for a cat bed box after the cat took huge offensive at finding a 6 year old squished in his hidey hole

The Really Useful Box company is just waiting out there for you to discover it, Provencal. The perfect solution: stacking boxes sized for pens (and other sizes for A4, for CDs, for all sorts of stuff). Crayons in one box, felt-tips in another, pencils in a third, and so on.

Really, they will transform your orderly life, suddenly East and West shall meet over tidying away the art stuff, and, better yet, they won't wear out like cardboard.

Mine likes to sleep in them, twinkle. :)

Our pens, crayons, etc are all in one big box. Much simpler than sorting them all back into the original boxes.

I guess I am anal about putting the pens back in their own box. I do like to know they are all there because it saves the inevitable 'where's the pink' conversation later down the line. Regardless I just on't get the need to rip open the box, whether we are reusing or not.