Maximum Packaging

All about packaging and shipping supplies

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Storage Safety

Before I started my online golf club business, I didn’t realize all the options there were when it came to packaging and shipping the clubs. There are cheap moving boxes that are specifically for golf clubs. They have a divider down the center and an opening at the bottom of the box for the head of the club. This makes it very efficient when it comes to shipping what’s called a mallet putter. In the olden days, putters looked all the same. They had a long shaft and a head that was, and still is, called a “blade”. This blade is narrow and somewhat skinny. Nowadays, however, the hot new trend in golf putters are the mallet head. A mallet head is usually a square head that is at least 3x3 inches long and wide. Therefore, there needs to be quite a bit of room in the bottom of these cheap moving boxes used to ship these types of putters.

When it comes to putting, nearly all of it is based on feel and personal preference. Some people are naturally great putters. Some people are not. Many people that have played putt putt golf and have had success automatically think they’d be good at putting in the real game of golf. This could not be further from the truth. Most people that are good at putt putt golf will blast the ball 20 feet by the hole on a 10 foot putt on a real course. It’s all about feel and understanding how the ball responds to the particular putter you’re using. Most blade putters are lighter and need more force to make the ball roll out. Most mallet putters, however, have a little more punch to them. They don’t take as much force to make the ball roll out because they are naturally heavier than blade putters.

Another huge difference between blade and mallet putters is the difficulty (or ease) in keeping the face of the club square. With a blade, it’s a lot easier to get the face off line because any amount of wrist movement will turn the head of the club even the tiniest bit. This results in the ball starting left or right of your intended line. With mallet putters, they are bigger and have more weight, so they’re harder to get the face off center. This is one of the main reasons people have chosen to use mallet putters over blade putters.

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Remodeling Your Home

I was looking to change up the exterior of my home, because currently we have a tan shade of metal siding, with dark brown window trim, garage and a white front door that hasn’t been changed for nearly 20 years. We have three White pillars on our porch, they are not the oversized pillars that you might be thinking of, these are just simply 4 x 4 posts. Our porch runs along one side of our house and is approximately 10 foot wide by 25 feet long.

As always my idea search starts on Pinterest or just the World Wide Web. Through all of the photographs I viewed I decided that I absolutely love this orangey cedar stain. It seemed to work very well with the tan and white pallet in the pictures I pinned and printed. Once I had the ideas in place and approval from my husband we began.

My husband was instrumental in bringing this look to life. He is the handiest of handyman’s, jack of all trades, the best at honey do list, skilled and trainable on most anything. He started by wrapping the pillars in cedar planks to beef them up some. Next he laid pavers up the bottom half for a substantial brick and wood support system. The pavers matched extremely well with our orangey cedar stain.

 After the new pillars were finished my husband built new wooden shutters for all the front windows. To start, he broke down a few cheap moving boxes and laid them under the workhorses to soak up extra stain. He used dogeared cedar fence panels. The price was amazing compared to buying wooden shutters. He literally made shutters for four windows for $75 including the price of more stain, how amazing is that. The shutters simply have three planks running lengthwise of the window, top to bottom, and two planks running across (down slightly from the top and up slightly from the bottom,) and one diagonal board making a Z to the cross blanks, this Z is what holds the other three planks together. Of course we use the same stain on the shutters as we did for the pillars. The new shutters gave our home a cabin feel, that we absolutely love.

Next I needed to dress up the windows some. So I added candles to all the front windows. Not just every day cheap candles but nice ones that are a little shorter, that have realistic rubber tipped bulbs, And have dusk to dawn timers. Talk about adding warmth to the exterior of our house, wow!

Someday the next element I would like to add to the exterior change, is painting out the garage door from brown to white. Using the same cheap moving boxes method as a tarp, I’d go crazy painting the garage! I still haven’t convinced my husband that this will be an added beauty, thus it remains dark brown. If you Google farmhouse, with rustic accents, I am sure you will see this white look with the orangey cedar pop up immediately. It is absolutely one of my favorite color combinations. Right up there with black and oak, another one of my favorite color combinations. I encourage you to look up this combination and see what you think. Good luck and happy curb appealing!

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Bargain Buying

One of my favorite places to shop for a bargain is eBay. eBay has anything you could ever hope and dream of. If you’re looking for something, new or used, someone is selling it on eBay. One of my favorite things to do is golf. Unfortunately, golf is pretty expensive in every facet of the sport. Clubs, balls, equipment, and the actual round of golf itself are all very expensive. That’s why I go to eBay to find the clubs I want and need. Aside from the set of irons I purchased brand new, nearly every club in my bag is “used”. In the world of golf, “used” has a negative connotation. As if the club cannot give you peak performance unless you buy it brand new.

This is an absolute lie that so many people have believed. It’s honestly comparable to buying a brand new vehicle. Yes, the vehicle has never been driven, but it also loses nearly 15% of its value as soon as you drive it off the lot. There’s no difference when it comes to golf clubs either. Once the club has been hit one time, it is considered “used” and its value plummets. People don’t realize how much the club decreases in value though. They buy the clubs new, receive them in cheap moving boxes in the mail, unwrap them, hit them, realize they hate them, wrap them back up, and send them back in the boxes expecting to get a full refund. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that. Unless the club was broken or something was wrong with it mechanically, it cannot be returned for full price.

When the company receives the return, they tell the returner that they’ll buy the clubs back for nearly half the cost they just sold it for. The returner gets mad and says “no way”. So, they ship the clubs back to the purchaser in cheap moving boxes. The purchaser tries his luck on eBay, and guys like me sweep these clubs up for a price that is just over half of what it would cost to buy them brand new. Therefore, my golf experience gets better and better knowing that I have saved a great deal of money in a sport that is otherwise very expensive.

This makes playing the game so much more fun. Buying high dollar clubs that are brand new, and then not performing very well has got to be the most frustrating thing ever for golfers. I’m glad I don’t have that frustration.