Why are people trading trinkets in junction boxes?

From the outside they look intriguing - the kind of weatherproof box your electricity meter might be housed in, except they're usually painted in pastel colours and adorned with stickers.

Open them up and you'll find all manner of tiny treasures, including keyrings, badges, children's toys, beaded bracelets, small plushies, colourful stationery and figurines.

They're known as trinket trade boxes and hundreds of them are popping up in public places all over the world.

"You just go along with something you would happily trade in, put one in and take one out," says Ashleigh Pithers, who installed a trinket trade box in Nottingham in March.

"There's no real rules what you can put in. Just anything that makes you happy."

Ashleigh was "very, very surprised" by the reaction when she installed her trinket trade box.

"It was crazy," she says. "I walked to the box a few times to check on it, and people were around there and were going after me.

"I got to speak to a few people about the idea and how they thought it was really cute, so it was nice to meet people that were enjoying it.

"I put a video on TikTok, and I'd never posted a video on TikTok before. I was expecting a couple of hundred views but it's now got 102K views or something crazy."

Unfortunately Ashleigh's trinket trade box was stolen after only a couple of weeks, but she has not been deterred.

She's in the process of making a new trinket trade box and has found a more secure location to install it.

"These things can happen and you can't let it dampen the whole thing," she says.

The trend for trinket trade boxes is relatively new and originates from the US.

Rachael Harms Mahlandt is an artist living in Portland, Oregan, and she has been keeping track of them through a project called Worldwide Sidewalk Joy.

A map on her website plots more than 1,200 trinket trade boxes and similar installations spread across the globe.

They're becoming so popular that Rachael is struggling to keep up.

"I used to add three to five spots a week, now I'm getting 20 to 40 submissions every day, it's wild," she says.

"I think we're craving community and this is such a cool way to connect with community, to put something out generously and then see what comes back to you."

Before Sidewalk Joy became a worldwide project, Rachael originally concentrated on installations around Portland.

She had been looking for something to do with her children in the pandemic, so they made an adventure club to explore the city as if they were tourists.

While on their adventures they kept coming across "amazing" installations housed inside homemade wooden boxes.

"Somebody had on their front porch steps a rubber duck trading station, and someone else had a toy car swap, or a little diorama that changed out monthly," says Rachael.

"It was really exciting to find these spots. My kids were quite entertained at them and I thought they were so neat."

Rachael decided to create her own diorama in March 2022, and it had a dinosaur theme, so she naturally called it the Dinorama.

She also created an Instagram account to share Dinorama updates, and highlight other spots her family had enjoyed seeing.

She later teamed up with another local artist and the Sidewalk Joy Map was born in January 2023.

"It blew up from there," says Rachael. "I had people starting to come visit Portland from faraway places, Australia, Japan, wanting to come see these little installations."

Rachael created the Worldwide Sidewalk Joy Map in September 2024.

"It's just spread and spread and spread," says Rachael. "We have spaces like this in Sweden, and a bunch in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, we got one in Germany, and one more just launched in Ireland.

"I'm seeing them popping up truly worldwide now."

The original trading boxes were handmade from wood, and people have only been using ready-made junction boxes in recent months.

The first is thought to have been the Philly Trinket Trove, which was created in Philadelphia in September.

Rachael believes the relative ease of using a ready-made junction box - rather than having to build something - has made the trend more accessible.

"It's been pretty explosive," she says. "There have been a few trinket trading spots on the map for years, but I feel like Philly Trinket Trove really struck gold with showing people how to create a spot like this without building."

While Philly Trinket Trove has inspired lots of people to use ready-made junction boxes, its creator Elana Flehinger has cited other Sidewalk Joy spots as her inspiration.

These include the Duck Library, where people can swap tiny plastic ducks, or the Shrek Box, where people can swap Shrek memorabilia and crafted items.

JJ Cerillo describes herself as the "librarian" of the Duck Library, which is based in New York City.

About three years ago, while working as a dog walker, she found a tiny yellow duck stuck to a metal post with a magnet.

It "completely made her day", so she began making magnetic ducks herself and placing them throughout the Chelsea and Inwood neighbourhoods.

"It didn't take long before it became a 'thing'," she says.

"I would see kids scanning blocks, checking every surface, excitedly searching for ducks, and eventually other animals too. That joy was everything."

She then received a video, sent anonymously to her Instagram account, of a small "Duck Library" installed on a pole. Inside, it read: "Take a duck, leave a duck."

"That moment changed everything," says JJ.

"I began maintaining and filling the library - multiple times a day at first - because people were mostly just taking ducks. And honestly, that didn't bother me. The goal was always joy."

She eventually reached out to the anonymous creator to learn how to build one herself, and created a second Duck Library.

"Seeing kids run up to the library, swing open the door, and light up at what they found inside, it's hard to describe how special that feels," she says.

The Shrek Box was founded even earlier - back in May 2021 by Wil Keiper, who placed it outside his apartment in Philadelphia.

Wil is disabled so his caregiver helped him repurpose an old newspaper box.

"It was basically a play on the little libraries where you take a book, leave a book. And so it was take a Shrek, leave a Shrek," he says.

Wil didn't publicise the box or post it online, but it "blew up" after a day or so when someone else posted it on TikTok.

"There were lines of people that weekend lined up to put stuff in the box and see it," he says.

Wil says the Shrek Box has given him a sense of purpose to some degree.

"Being disabled I don't have a lot to do, so I'm glad to be able to go out there and work on it, or with the Instagram people send me videos of them putting stuff in it, so it makes me happy every time I see that people are still enjoying it," he says.

Wil later moved from his apartment, so the box was relocated a few streets away, where a couple monitor it from their house.

He says he feels "very honoured" to have inspired the Philly Trinket Trove, which has in turn inspired other boxes.

The trend has spread to other countries largely due to social media.

At the last count, Rachael said there were 32 Sidewalk Joy spots in the UK, and 25 of these are repurposed junction box trinket swaps.

Sheri Scott is among the people adding to the growing number.

She runs a shop in Margate called Silly, which sells "trinkets, bits and things and such", so creating a trinket trade box outside the shop is an ideal fit.

"I just love the concept of silly little trinkets bringing people joy," says Sheri.

"It's just a lovely idea to connect a community by silly little things."

Sheri is known as "the orange lady of Margate" because she always dresses in orange, her hair is orange and her shop is orange.

She has already bought her junction box and plans to spray paint it, but the colour could be anyone's guess.

Meanwhile, up in Nottingham, Ashleigh is getting ready to install a new trinket box to replace the one that was stolen.

"I just need to paint it and stuff but I'm looking forward to getting it back out and seeing people using it again," she says.

"It made me really happy and I just thought 'I know I'd enjoy it', so I'm glad other people were enjoying it."

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