Recession got you living in a cardboard box? Take heart: That doesn’t have to mean missing out on stylish furniture. Karton’s modular, foldable furniture is sturdy (the bed can support almost 2,000 pounds), assembles in minutes, and is made entirely out of cardboard.
Putting this furniture together looks not unlike constructing, say, one of those flat-pack document storage boxes. There’s no glue or Allen wrenches — you just fold tab A into slot B, like you were making complicated cardboard origami, but the result is a piece of furniture solid enough to use until you’ve saved up enough to move out of your refrigerator carton.
The bed is probably the coolest, because the same bed can be folded small for a twin or large for a king, plus it’s hefty enough to sleep 10 people — and there’s space underneath for storage, in folded cardboard drawers of course. But Karton also offers tables, chairs, playsets, modular bookshelves, and a TV console that looks amazingly like real furniture. All of it is recycled and recyclable, all of it is cheap, and all of it packs flat, and it kicks the crap out of meant-to-be-disposed-of-but-not-actually-disposable furniture like IKEA for frequent movers and impoverished students.
Unfortunately, it’s also only available in Australia. So if you live Down Under, you’re in luck. The rest of you? Find a big box and start cutting.
