Boxes

Never thought about boxes very much before I got into this business. But boxes seem to come up a lot for me. Just yesterday I was at a restaurant eating dinner with Doug and began to receive multiple messages on my phone from Rene, the guy in Michoacan who does my packing, wanting to know what size boxes should he buy for the next shipment. He gave me many choices, supplying the measurements for me (in centimeters which I needed to quickly convert) to make the decision. The boxes were important enough to him that he felt it was necessary to disturb my Saturday night. Hmm, I'm not sure about that.

Just a few days before this I was searching for just the right box to ship a large platter to a customer. For some reason I didn't have one in the size I needed it, though I have a pretty large collection of boxes because I'm always looking for free ones and rarely throw anything away. You probably don't think about boxes very much but when UPS charges eight bucks for a medium size box, that cost cuts into one's profits, so it becomes extremely important to a small business owner like me. In case you're interested, the US Post Office charges half that.

I was also thinking about boxes yesterday while filling out an online application for Amazon's new Handmade marketplace. My answers (and really my business model and practice) do not fit into one of their boxes-- so it was really, really hard. Never thought much about the origin of the popular expression "to think outside the box", but I guess that's where it comes from. Makes sense. I like to believe that I do that kind of thinking a lot.

Today as I anticipate the next delivery of the beautiful crafts and folk art that I purchased in Mexico this past summer --I expect I'll do a happy dance when I see those boxes on my driveway. At that moment, I will definitely be thinking INSIDE the box.