FrogBox by Michael Kwan (Freelancer), on Flickr

Oh, Froggy went a-courting and he did ride … in a big, green plastic box that is an environmentally sustainable answer to the eternal cardboard conundrum. Dragon Den‘s Jim Treliving has a stake in this Vancouver-based company, so it must be a good thing, right?

Well, actually, it looks like it probably is. Full disclosure right now: I haven’t moved house since 1995, so I haven’t used the service myself. Furthermore, I’m writing this blog post for a competition. There, that’s over. On to tell you why I think reusable moving boxes are a way better idea than sliced bread.

Cardboard boxes are icky. They fall apart when they get wet, they harbour bedbugs (which is why collecting used ones is not as much fun as it used to be), and worst of all, they hang around and encourage the accumulation of clutter. I have boxes in my basement with stuff I brought from the Netherlands in 1994, and it is probably a reasonable guess that if I’ve lived without it for 19 years, it’s not something that’s critical for my well-being. Yet, I brought the detritus of my twenties all this way, and I can’t get rid of it, because I have all these sturdy cardboard boxes to put it in. Yes, I know, I should empty the boxes and get rid of both the clutter and the cardboard. Even better, put the boxes in the dump unopened. I can’t. Much to my husband’s dismay, the one box I tried to deal with is still sitting in our bedroom, half-full of old letters from people I barely remember. One of these days I will finish it, I’m sure. Maybe.

Enter Frogbox, for those of you who are fortunate enough not to be surrounded by ghosts dressed in cardboard. When you are hopping from one pad to the other, you pay Frogbox some of your hard-earned money, but what a gift you get in return. They will drop these sturdy plastic boxes off at your door, and you get to keep them for one week (extensions possible, but it may cost you more). You fill them with your stuff, cart them over to the new lily, and then you must EMPTY THEM and return the boxes to their rightful owner, who will then sanitise them and send them out into the world again.

Instead of hiding your clutter in the basement in somewhat neat piles of cardboard, you have to deal with it. Better yet, if you have considered this prospect before the move, you already decluttered it and never moved it into your new place at all.

I think that Frogbox is truly a gift to clutterbugs like me. Better for the environment, better for business and infinitely better for sanity. If you are moving house, don’t let the cardboard monster in the door. Go for reusable, sustainable and GONE.