There's No Place Like Home... For Storing Boxes

Clare Hastings (Head of Most Things at The Indytute and Clippykit)

There’s no place like home for storing boxes, especially if you’re a start up. The most important thing about home is it’s free. You live there, so you can carry on working 24/7 with coffee on tap.

When Calypso started an accessory company, she was still living at home. I was her strongest supporter, and also her work partner, so at the start the storage was no problem. One year on we were watching the T.V through a wall of boxes. They had reproduced under the kitchen table, formed a corridor down the stairs and loomed above us in the bedroom. We had become subservient to boxes, moving them about if a need arose, such as getting dressed or cleaning your teeth.

One day we were taking a tour of a trade show in Earls Court when the call came.

‘Come home now’
‘We can’t’
‘NOW! There is a lorry outside with two pallets of flat cardboard boxes’.
‘Put them in the house’
‘Do you know how much cardboard is contained on a pallet?’
‘No’

‘Well I do. If the boxes are unloaded they will stretch down the stairs, out onto the pavement and well into the road. Where would you like them to go? The driver is waiting’.

This conversation was with my husband. Nick no longer wanted to live in the box city. 

We decamped to our first Big Yellow. He redecorated the house.