(单词翻译:单击)
Of all the things I’ve purchased during the pandemic, the most useful has been a box cutter.
在疫情期间我购买的所有东西中，最有用的是一把美工刀。
Until last summer, I had put off buying one for more than 15 years, through no fewer than nine apartment moves’ worth of unpacking with dull scissors and countless struggles against shipping boxes bound by tape reinforced with tiny threads.
直到去年夏天，我推迟了15年多的时间才买到一把美工刀，经历了至少9次搬家，用钝剪刀拆箱，无数次与用细线加固和用胶带捆扎的装运箱抗争。
This knife entered my life as a tool for some minor home repairs, but it’s scarcely exited my right hand since.
这把刀进入了我的生活，作为一种小型的家庭维修工具，但从那以后它几乎没有离开我的右手。
It doesn’t even have a place to be put away. It is never away.
它甚至都没有存放的地方。 它永远不会离开。
For more than a year, I have wielded my box cutter like a machete in a jungle of packaging, disassembling boxes taller than I am and smaller than the palm of my hand.
一年多来，我使用美工刀就像在丛林中使用大砍刀一样，打包、拆卸比我高、比我的手掌还小的箱子。
I’ve ordered things online that I might have previously picked up on the way home from work, as well as a slew of things that I needed or wanted as life changed:
我在网上订购了以前可能在下班回家的路上才会买的东西，以及一大堆随着生活的改变我需要或想要的东西:
disposable masks, sweatpants to replace the pairs that sprouted holes, a desk chair after my sciatic nerve began to throb.
一次性口罩, 代替那些破洞裤子的运动裤, 一把坐骨神经开始抽搐后需要坐的办公椅。
Many of the boxes those items came in contained other boxes that also needed to be broken down.
装这些物品的许多箱子里还有其他需要拆开的箱子。
In the at-home hair-dye kit I ordered to cover my roots while salons were closed, for example, almost everything inside the box (itself sheathed in a cardboard sleeve) came in its own, smaller box—the tube of hair dye, the disposable gloves, even the single-use plastic bonnet.
比如，当沙龙关门时，我为盖住我的发根而订购了家用染发套装，盒子里的几乎所有东西(都包在纸板套里)都有自己的小盒子——染发剂，一次性手套，甚至是一次性塑料帽。
That’s to say nothing of the crumpled brown paper, the air-filled clear-plastic buffers, the little cardboard inserts used to hold a product within an exterior box’s transparent window, the generic thank-you-for-your-purchase cards, the stickers and refrigerator magnets that come tucked inside orders from venture-backed lifestyle brands.
更不用说皱巴巴牛皮纸,透明塑料充气保护袋, 用于将产品放在外箱的透明窗内的纸板衬垫,通用感谢卡, 贴纸和冰箱磁铁贴, 这些都是来自风投支持的生活方式品牌的订单。
No matter how much I have tried to consolidate orders; to buy in unglamorous, low-waste bulk; or to just go without, the cardboard and paper and plastic keep piling up.
无论我多么努力地整合订单，购买没啥吸引力、不那么浪费的大批量商品，或者干脆不买带这些东西的产品，纸板、纸张和塑料都会堆积如山。
A certain amount of it is necessary for transportation purposes, but much of it is just for show, with no way to opt out of being in the audience.
其中一部分是出于交通目的，但大部分只是为了没有办法选择不成为观众的表演。
The experience of opening and handling a purchase can be more important than the thing itself.
打开和处理一件商品的体验可能比商品本身更重要。
I would be giving myself too much credit if I claimed that I hated creating all this refuse.
如果我说我讨厌创造这些垃圾，那我就太高估自己了。
I hate looking at it in a sad, flattened stack in the corner of my apartment, hate that there isn’t an obvious use for almost any of it, hate that it’s a physical manifestation of my occasionally poor impulse control.
我讨厌看着它悲哀地躺在公寓的角落里，讨厌它几乎没有任何明显的用途，讨厌它是我偶尔冲动、控制能力低下的一种外在表现。
