Sometimes you walk out with the shoes you just bought and don't need anything else--all the packaging crud it comes with gets chucked.

Depends on the box too; I don't have any Nike shoe boxes; I try to hold on to my Fluevog or Gucci boxes..

Though I never did awesome artsy things with them, I have had a lifelong fondness for shoe boxes. I vastly prefer them to all other varieties of small cardboard box -- in fact, I prefer getting presents that are packaged in shoe boxes.

I have no idea why this is and in fact hadn't even consciously remarked my fondness before reading your post, but yeah, shoe boxes are pretty great.

They make great barbie beds. I'm just sayin'.

(I have photos in an old, yellow-ribboned, heart-shaped candy box, too. It's held up surprisingly well. I forget who gave me the candy.)

≡ Click to see image ≡

Need I say more? I had dozens of shoe boxes filled with paper dolls when I was a kid... yet I guess that doesn't answer the question, does it?

Well, when I see a nice shoe box to this day I'm all, "woo! score!"

I think when those plastic shoeboxes started coming out, the coolness of cardboard shoeboxes began to decline. In high school I used shoeboxes to hold my cassette tapes - no need for that now. I still use them to hold letters and postcards, but go through them at a slower rate. And I haven't made a diorama in a long time, though dioramas make a kickass birthday or going-away present.

Shoe box = worthless consumer waste. Why do we have them at all?

good point, arse_hat. I'm so used to shoeboxes I never thought about whether they were necessary. They're probably a holdout from the days when you took everything home in boxes, including clothes and gloves and such. I can remember that.

I habitually hoard shoe boxes, even though I haven't used them with any frequency in years. I used to always keep letters, postcards, and photos in them. I've got a stack of a half dozen or so in my office right now, and I have no use for them but it seems weird to throw them out.

I really get way too pissed at consumer waste, but really!

I mean, I love to go to my neighbourhood hardware store where things almost never have a box or a plastic container and they get put into a paper sack and they are cheaper than at the big box stores and I really hate when the packaging weighs more than the product.

I remember when most things had no packaging.

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!

I bought some boots yesterday... I have no use for the box. You're welcome to it, but it's in Melbourne.

My sister's family were visiting my parents for the holidays, and we had huge, huge difficulty in persuading my 5 year old nephew not to take the cardboard box for his sales-bought new shoes back with him. After heartbreaking remonstrances at the airport, we finally manages to tug it from his hands after firm promises to save it for him next time he visits.

I had a cat Lefty that loved shoe boxes. He'd scrunch up in one and just nap for hours. When he got bigger it was really funny because he didn't fit, but he'd just stay there, his fur hanging out from the sides, eyes closed like some sphinx.

I'll keep well-constructed shoe boxes to store stuff in, but the cheapo boxes go to the kids for their enjoyment and ultimate destruction.

the big box stores and I really hate when the packaging weighs more than the product.

I had this weird moment maybe five years ago when I was developing an interactive game for a museum. The game involved purchasing, like, 500 different types of balls and small toys - Nerfs, baseballs, red rubber balls, kickballs, wiffle balls, Kooshes, you name it.

The weird moment came when I went out and got a few hundred of these at the nearest big box store. When I sat down I had to spend about an hour unwrapping all the balls from their various packaging. When I was done, I had two equally sized piles of plastic - one was the product, and one was the packaging. It was hard to understand why one had value and one didn't. At that moment I realized something was very wrong.

Well, shoe boxes are cool, there's no doubt about that. But I also get incredibly frustrated at the incredible excess of packing that surrounds everything these days (maybe it always did and we're just more aware of the damage it does these days?). At least shoe boxes are incredibly useful after they've finished being shoe boxes, unlike almost all packaging. Sometimes I think there is more care taken with designing packaging than the contents and this is reflected in the (lack of) value you get for your money these days.