Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Upcycled desk system for kids

My daughter has struggled her entire life with organization. She gets it honestly, as my coworkers who have seen my desk can attest.

We have tried everything to help her. Planners. The Brownie organization badge. You name it.

Our latest project came courtesy of the school pizza fundraiser. No, it wasn't a prize for selling, either.

You see, each year, we're stuck with the question of what to do with the boxes leftover from the pizzas we buy for our house. And then I got inspired by Pinterest. Somewhere, along the way, we'd seen a project about project drying racks out of pizza boxes. Granted, the post has long since left me, but the idea stayed pinned in my brain.

So this year, I took a stack of pizza boxes left over from storing them in my freezer (I don't put the boxes themselves in due to space.)

I folded in one side and stacked them, then went nuts taping row after row of peace sign, heart and flower duct tape I'd bought at the school supply clearance.

Ten minutes of effort and a few dollars' worth of duct tape later, and my daughter was blessed with a surprise on her desk: A new organizer for all of her random papers.

Now she has plenty of space for her looseleaf notebook paper, her construction paper, and her various works of art in progress!




The best part was SHE was inspired to do something as well. She took a McDonalds Happy Meal Halloween bucket that was otherwise destined for the Goodwill bin and redecorated it with Monster High duct tape for a storage bucket for her rolls of duct tape. She even took a toilet paper roll and made her own pencil holder.



What ways have you creatively reused or upcycled items to organize your home?

1 comment:

Barb @ A Life in Balance said...

Wow! I love how you guys recycled items destined for the trash. I hope your daughter has lots of fun with her new desk organizer.

Thank you for sharing your post at Fabulously Frugal Thursday.