Friday, November 14, 2014

DIY Poster Storage Unit



Storage and organization of school and house supplies in our house is an on-going battle.
We have so many things that require odd sized storage containers. Things that would be quite cost prohibitive to our budget, or difficult to find.


Case in point. Not everybody has a need to store a whole bunch of posters in their house. But this girl does. Educational posters of every size and description. So, my dear husband, built me something to store them all in.

Looks simple right? Simple, and built like a tank. Relatively cheap too.




It has worked to store those lovely posters for quite a while. I've been quite happy to have it, since something made of card board would run about $15 at the local store, but if you want to sort between types of posters, adding extra card board as dividers comes at $5 per sheet. I could also get a plastic, envelope like deal for about $20.

So for a while the size did its' job. Then I needed a bigger one. Nothing I could find really was quite right. None of it fulfilled my 'needs to be built like a tank' criteria. Save for the one that was gorgeous. It was $679.
Not gonna happen.



We decided the most budget friendly thing we could do was to modify what we had.
Using 2x4's, and ply wood, our resident 'stuff builder' added sides and a backing to the one I already had.
Three times.




Effectively we created permanent compartments that will allow for storage of different items.


We were going for functional, rather than pretty, but as a nice touch, The 'Stuff Builder' even made an outside cover for it, so it looked slightly better.


Looks raw, but it will definitely do what I need it to, and we won't have stuff falling all over the place.


I'll bet you're wondering what all of the compartments were for. Well, by the time I was finished loading it, I had loaded about 50 posters, a Wii Fit board, that one sad TV table that is still in our house, but didn't have a home, a crokinole board, three large art clip boards, a bunch of poster board, and a large folding card table.
Now all that stuff isn't just leaned up against my wall being knocked around by the kids.
For those who are curious, the total price tag on this project was about $30.

I'm so happy to have this problem solved.
I would wait to post this until it's painted, but I know that most of the projects around here hit 80% done before we abandon them. Paint would be the last 20% of this project.