They breed like Tribbles, at least at my house.
My housemate (a.k.a. the Prince Consort) is a dedicated packrat with a penchant for ordering from eBay. Hardly a day goes by that one or more parcels, small to bulky, are not delivered to the Palace. I'm pretty certain the mail carrier hates us.
Since TPC is an Uber Slob whose ample designated closet and drawer space is destined to remain unused forever, this situation has resulted in a lot of used packing material freely scattered among his considerable crap collection. Styrofoam peanuts, foam preforms, bubble wrap ….that stuff takes up an unbelievable amount of cubic space and it's not something you can in good conscience just throw away.
Thank God for the Craig's List “Free Stuff” classifieds.
When I finally started insisting we store the peanuts, foam, etc. in 50-gallon trash bags and recycle the cardboard cartons, a light went on. It was Christmas break and since I had some free time, I placed an ad on Craigslist.org. Within 2 hours, someone claimed the free packing material—a nice retired couple with a small china and glassware collectibles business. They showed up with a minivan that same day. And just so you don't think I'm exaggerating about the packrat clutter problem, that van was stuffed full when they left my house with the loot. The cardboard cartons were flattened and placed alongside the recycle bin, and that was pretty large stack too.
These days, TPC is limited to no more than two 50-gallon bags of packing material at one time, which is plenty for any shipping or returning he needs to do. And yes, the peanuts are still breeding in the dark corners of my basement. I periodically shine a light on them and place a Craig's List ad. “They're on the front porch. Don't even knock: just take them,” I say.
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