Bunny ownership is hazardous

[cimorene]

In the media storage era, before streaming conquered, we acquired a large collection of Little Green Boxes With Lids. I use capital letters because of how much I loved these little guys.



Ikea and competitors were full of these little boxes in cardboard with metal trim - rivets and corners and edging - sized to hold a stack of dvds or cds in their plastic cases, lying down so the row of spines was visible when you lifted the lid after pulling the box out like a drawer.

Also, around 2014(?) a version of these cardboard+metal boxes started appearing that was designed for hanging file folders. They were very trendy, for a few years, in nearly every store. We got a few (not green, though: they were all brown and white and gray at that point) to hold the important papers that had previously lived in a combination of binders, elasticated folder boxes, and piles in apple crates and desk drawers.

Then, in 2015, we got house bunnies! And they chew everything: their teeth are made for it and grow constantly, like rodents'. You could say chewing things is their hobby, but they're so dedicated that it's really more like their calling. The most important things to protect from bunny teeth are electrical cables, but bunnies will actually chew anything wicker (any baskets or furniture), hemp and natural fibers (they basically ate an entire coconut fiber welcome mat, so we had to get a rubber one)... and cardboard, which includes books. Any of these materials on the floor or the bottom shelf of a bookcase is just asking for trouble: we have a bunch of books with nibbled spines that used to be on the bottom shelf, and there were some puzzles on the same shelf until they ate the entire picture off the lid of the puzzle box while leaving the box intact.

Even after all our media downsizing, here in our house the last few years we still have had our cds in paper sleeves in six Little Green Boxes with Lids, plus our hanging files in four cardboard boxes with lids, and these have been on the bottom shelf for the past few years.

All of these boxes have been nibbled now. Some have only had the shiny paper nibbled off, but others have had the corners eaten right through.



Replacing the cd boxes with plastic ones was easy, but the hanging files are another matter. The cardboard ones aren't sold anymore most places, which is probably because everyone discovered that it isn't really strong enough, making it collapse under the weight of the files with a little time. But none of the places where we bought them are selling anything else to replace them either! (Granit still has the cardboard actually, but they don't have any in other materials.) Ikea doesn't even sell any solutions for hanging files at all. Also no other solutions that let you page through the files, really, just stuff designed to hold paper lying in flat stacks.

Business still uses hanging files, obviously, but the solutions there are mostly built into big furniture. You can buy these racks/carriers in metal or plastic, though, which are presumably designed to stand inside a cabinet, but we could put them in plastic bins if necessary. I'm going to try sticking the nibbled cardboard box (or most of it) into a storage bin first, but if it doesn't fit, we can order a couple of the racks.

Comments

[viggorlijah]

You can pretty easily build custom sized boxes with a box cutter and duct tape and then cover with nice paper for exact fit. I made my letters & postcard rack that way and it’s handy when you need a weird size. The trick is to cut all the sides and then use duct tape (or masking tape if you have sticky enough) to join all the edges so they are flush but not overlapping. I tape off any exposed edges and then have just basically gift wrapped the box or taped it over with washi tape.

[viggorlijah]

They ate your BOOKS?! Bad bunnies!

[cimorene]

The books were a blow, but fortunately no book has been completely ingested, just a bit nibbled.

[dorothean]

Oh hanging file storage! I have tried so many options. I recently achieved my dream of acquiring a metal file cabinet with five drawers for hanging files—this is really the best for staying organized because I can get at everything so easily. When I had my files in lots of boxes it was easy to defer putting away new papers because I’d have to find the correct box, which was usually at the bottom of a stack…

Anyway, I haven’t yet found paper file storage for home use to be obsolescent in office supply stores, although I wouldn’t be surprised not to find it in a general home goods store. For example, here’s what’s available at Staples: https://www.staples.com/File-Storage/cat_CL165731 — this includes lots of plastic tubs of varying capacity! But you may also find banker’s boxes to be helpful if you have a bunny-safe location. These are very sturdy cardboard boxes with separate lids. They are sized to fit letter- and legal-sized folders but not the hanging folders. So you can see the tabs of all your file folders from the top but have to do without the extra labels from the hanging folders. They are very space efficient for files you want to save but not access regularly.

Banker’s boxes are so helpful that I would be surprised if they aren’t available in Scandinavia—perhaps under an equivalently strange name though. (I don’t know why bankers! I’d think lawyers would have claimed them first.)

[cimorene]

We don't have any Staples in Finland, I don't think. As far as I'm aware, there aren't any huge recognizable name brands in that space that have physical stores we could visit, although I'm pretty sure there is at least one office store in the next town (half an hour away on the mainland). There are a couple of big online stores I could investigate.

But you definitely can get bankers' boxes here, it's just that we don't have any really practical bunny-safe locations to keep all our most important papers. The open shelves where the hanging files are kept is at least SOMEWHAT accessible, although the fact that we have to go pull out and open the box first does put a slightly too high ADHD threshold there so the papers "to file" tend to accumulate for months at a time before one of us files them.

[isilya]

We've had to do a ton of reorg to make our house fit two people, and one of the victims was the filing cabinet. We now have a fireproof document filing box (like this) which takes hanging folders and is, post-extremely-recent declutter, sufficient for our needs but I can see it's going to be a constant fight to stay on top of getting rid of stuff.

I do like the idea of having all of our important stuff in an easy-to-grab format though, basically a permanent go-bag for our documents. The fireproof nature of it is whatever (since we leave it unzipped for easy access; maybe we'll zip it up when we go on vacation or something).

[cimorene]

You know, I was recently recommended the little fire safe option at a "preparedness course", but when I did a quick search the other day, the first few options I saw were all extremely heavy SAFES that cost hundreds of bucks, which also has limited portability, so I just shrugged and left the idea. But maybe I should look a bit more and see if I can turn up something more like that.

[cimorene]

I have now spent a few hours googling frantically and no domestic store is selling them but we could get one from Amazon Germany.

I am drawn to cute boxes that are easier to access like the little metal ones Anatsuno linked, but I suppose this would be more practical... except it's bigger than the bookshelf so I guess we'd have to reorganize the room around it if we want to continue filing things!

[msilverstar]

Huh, tons of plastic hanging folder boxes around here.

[cimorene]

It's very weird, the only ones that I can find now are from about 2 brands and they're not that large but cost over 70 bucks per box!

[anatsuno]

I have a little bit of beef with hanging files systems but they *are* what I find most handy for boring admin stuff like invoices, insurance papers, taxes, etc, so I bought two metal boxes like this https://www.amazon.fr/Classeur-m%C3%A9nager-dossiers-suspendus-distant/dp/B0BZWD78FY/ that are okay for my needs - would that be something you can find locally at all maybe?

[cimorene]

This is like what Isilya recommended. I've gotta try harder to find them, maybe with different search terms...

[cimorene]

I can't believe how long I've spent googling this now for a product that is so boring 😂 I can now state with confidence that NOTHING LIKE THIS is for sale from Finnish online stores. I can get the exact one you linked from Amazon Germany though. And tbh it's the nicest option I've found there since it's sturdier than plastic and cuter, but I guess maybe I should get a big fireproof and floodproof insulated bag for all our important stuff. Isilya linked one and they have the same ones at amazon; it would cost less than two of these boxes would, but it wouldn't fit in any of our shelves so I struggle to imagine how we would handle it. The fact that the old file boxes were not in arm's reach of our desk and had lids, so you had to pull them out and take the lid off to file things, already meant that we rarely got around to it (we have a multi-pocket inbox/magazine rack on the wall that holds things in the meantime). At the old flat they were on the shelf above the computer monitors so it was a much lower threshold, but our new shelves above the desk aren't deep enough. These little boxes you've linked are a more manageable size and also the lid is hinged which reduces the number of steps you have to complete to put something away...