Not a pro here, but if this helps, here's my fruit fly experience; I took up vermiculture (worm composting), following online instructions. The instructions indicated to have them live in newspaper shreddings, I don't know if that worked for anyone else, but for us it began a fruit fly issue that did spread into some of our houseplants. For one thing we hadn't sterilized the worm castings before using them, that was a definite thing that allowed the fruit flies to spread to the plants. Google search some safe ways of sterilizing compost and soil that you think might have parasite eggs in it. But to get the fruit flies out of my worm castings, I changed the system. I brought in a bucket of sand and a bucket of old dried out clay/dirt from outside, and every time I added a bucket of plant waste to the mix, I'd bury it in the surroundings, then put a fine layer of dirt and then a finer layer of sand on top of all of the mix. That made it apparently entirely uninhabitable for the fruit flies. My theory is that to lay and incubate eggs, they need specifically the surface to be moist and rotten, I don't think they do a lot of burrowing, I'm guessing their wings would get damaged. So regardless of how organic the compost underneath is, they couldn't use it as a breeding ground so long as there was a barrier of dry sand and old clay-heavy soil. After figuring that out, I always pot my plants with a drier, older, nutrient parched soil for the top couple of centimeters. Haven't had the fruit fly issue since. Sorry if that wasn't concise! I thought it might help.

Consider me skeptical of this little anecdote. Can you talk me through the reasons why I care whether you're skeptical of what I witnessed? I'm not following that, sorry. You stood behind your curtains peeking out the window and called the cops, yet even after the cops arrived you did not have the intestinal fortitude to go talk to the cops... I am impressed...NOT 2nd, you alledge that the two individuals in question were "homeless addits", but you have no evidence to that fact I stopped reading here, because it wasn't necessary to proceed. You know I had no evidence for that fact because....? I did notice you went on for paragraph after paragraph after paragraph, despite not having an inkling, a clue, an idea, a whisper of what went on. And again, I am supposed to attend to your assessment because.....? The OP is long gone. The thread is entirely taken over by people who want to disagree for the sake of disagreeing. That makes some people feel special. A simple Google search reveals that soiling another's property is a crime. No need to read a lot of hot air about it.

Back to the boxes. I think the goal with the boxes will determine the fate. If the OP does want to sell them someday, then I would break the boxes down so they are flat and store them under a bed or something. Re-evaluate if they are really going to be sold every year or so. With a collectible item, I think it's important to remember that it take a looonnnngggg time for most things to be of much value or for people to collect them. That means the boxes may have to be saved for 50 years or more. And if everyone saved the boxes and the figurines, then the value would still be low because there would be too many of them floating around. Unless I wanted the boxes for moving purposes, they would not get space in my house. My last move was my 23rd move. I may have wished for a couple of boxes at one time or another, because I've always carried something in my lap that I was afraid would get broken. Not enough to keep boxes, though. I think most of us understand that a hard and fast rule on when to get rid of items doesn't generalize very well for how we live. I prefer to go back to my mantra of "I need a place to live my life, not store it." Items either help me achieve that goal or they interfere with the goal. Talley's example of the unicorn box illustrates how it makes her life easier to know a valued item can be safely packed away. I bought some old Hazel Atlas Christmas glasses which were still in the original box. Someone hung onto that for 50 years and I put it in the recycling bin. But if they hadn't chosen to keep thoses glasses in that box, I probably wouldn't have been able to buy them since they would have gotten broken. Gloria

Our pool is 3 1/2 x 5(+)x 4, with a sunshelf, and we love this setup. The entire pool gets used. I, personally like to swim laps, lay on the sunshelf and float. I like swimming from one end to the other and being able to put my feet down on either end when I get there, especially when playing with my kids in the pool. I have had all kinds of kids, younger and older, playing in my pool and they jump, do cannonballs, even my daughter does a front somersault off the edge (she isn't diving, pushes off from the edge, and lands similar to a cannonball all curled up), but we just don't allow diving and the kids don't really care. We also have a blow up slide that we set up in the middle of the pool and they have a blast. On Memorial Day, we had a volleyball game going and it was great. The adults stand more towards the net where it begins to slope down and get deeper and the shorter people are back in the shallower part. I mean we only go to a little over 5 feet in our deep area so adults can stand fine close to the net (and some kids too). We just decided to do this style pool because most of my neighbor's deep ends are 5-5 1/2' deep anyway and we just did the same thing but only we put ours in the center. It wasn't in our plans to pay extra for a deeper (7' +) deep end anyway, so we would've had around the same depth, traditional deep end or not. If you guys are just going to float and both of your kids are out of the house, you need to think about how much use you will get out of a diving board and a deep end. For grandkids, there are always fun pool toys to keep them busy, inflatable slides, bumper boats, etc. My point is, whatever you decide to go with, kids make their own fun in a pool no matter what the shape, depth or style.