Cut down your shipping costs

If your PTO program pays to ship your Box Tops like ours does, you might want to consider this little tip to save some money.

Some official Box Tops are printed on corrugated cardboard. Often these Box Tops are submitted whole, with the Box Top printed on the top sheet of corrugated cardboard, corrugation in the middle and a bottom sheet of cardboard paper. (See example in photo to the right.) Huggies diaper boxes are the most common Box Top participant with this type of Box Top. And if you're school is like ours, it's one of the Top 3 submitted Box Tops each year. (Look for Box Top code HMD.)

However, if you gently peel away the corrugation you can remove only the Box Top layer from the cardboard. The corrugation is lightly glued at each ridge and will make a popping sound as you peel it away. It's almost as fun to do as popping bubble wrap, once you do it a time or two.

Removing the extra corrugation will save you on shipping cost. You won't be paying to ship more than two times the weight of the Box Top to send in corrugation and a bottom sheet of cardboard paper, both of which earn you nothing.

Heartfelt congrats to friend and fellow blogger

Often I follow or star blogs that catch my attention because of their cool content (such as this video about how get elected officials involved in your cause) but occasionally another blog will catch my attention because it's well-written, even for an amateur.

Noah Knoble is the sales representative for the printer we use to print El Lechero magazine, which is published by my company. He blogs about paper prices, new media and print industry news. But this past weekend he shared with everyone his incredible graduation story.

For several years, he worked and went to school to finish his college degree. And he finally did it. Way to go, Noah! From one hard-working dad to another, you rock!

You can read his story here.

Popsicles for top classes

Recently collected our school's Box Top collection cans from teachers' classrooms. Thankfully, many of them had already collected a few more even after the deadline we gave them to collect for our school competition. The top grade level in our school (first grade) got snow cones and the top class in each grade level got Popsicles. We made over $2,600 from the Box Top program this past year.

We also handed out Box Top collection sheets to all classes - one for each month during summer vacation. It's our first time trying out this method of collection, so we'll see how it goes.