DIY ~ Organize and beautify your bookshelves

Lately the rather unpredictably organized storage cubes/bookshelves in our apartment have been driving me batty. While they have been a great storage space in our relatively small apartment (big for SF standards, small for normal people standards), the fabric bins lend themselves a bit too easily to us dumping random crap in there. And what should take me five seconds to grab a stapler ends up as a rummage-fest that ultimately leaves me grumpy. So I decided to do something about it! I came up with a way to compartmentalize the fabric bins and spruce/tidy up the shelves. You don’t have to have one of these lovely Tar-jay storage cubbies to do this DIY. Use it for your bookshelves, or get some fabric bins to organize that top closet shelf. Super handy. I’m quite pleased with how it turned out. Check out the before and after:

Before (Ew.) and After (Ooh.)

For this DIY, you’ll need:

– Contact paper (1-2 9ft rolls, depending on how much sq ft you’ll be covering. I got away with 1 roll for this project)

– Cardboard

– Box cutter (scissors will do if you don’t have a box cutter, but if you have one on hand, it’ll be your BFF for this project)

– Magazine file boxes (These ones from Ikea are dirt cheap)

– Fabric bins (Lots of color choices on Amazon)

1. Measure your bins and cut an appropriately sized piece of cardboard so that it can slide into your bin. If you want to divide your bin into 4 separate quarters, you’ll need 2 pieces of cardboard per bin. If your bin isn’t perfectly square, you’ll need to remeasure from opposite sides for the dimensions for the second piece of cardboard.

2. Cover your cardboard with contact paper.

3. Measure the halfway point of this piece of cardboard and mark it.

4. Start in the center of the board and cut a slit into the cardboard down to the edge, about a centimeter wide. Do this with all your pieces of cardboard.

5. Slide this piece of cardboard into your fabric bin, slit up.

6. Slide another piece of cardboard in perpendicular to the first one. Match up the slits.

7. Voila!

8. Lastly, cover your magazine file boxes in contact paper. I didn’t have enough contact paper on hand to cover the sides of the file boxes, but I figured that was fine since it was really only the backs that would be showing in the bookshelf.