Free pen holders – getcha some
Inspired by addictive blog Apartment Therapy – and an OCD-need to keep my pens in separate homes – I set out recently to make my own pen holders:
- One for pencils
- One each for blue, black and red pens
- One for highlighters
- One for Sharpies
…you get the sorry idea.
What do you think?
From humble cans of coconut milk to centre stage and totally useful.
Get your own:
- Choose some wrapping paper or something delightful
- Measure the can’s circumference & height, cut your paper to size
- Stick a length of double-sided tape to one edge of the paper & wrap around
- Seal the other end of paper to the can with some more tape
2 minutes flat!
(If I had a little more Martha in me [Blue Peter skills for Brits] I might change them up for the seasons. I’ll leave that up to you!)
Expensive office storage? I think not.
Boxes and buckets. Does life get better? Nope.
My absolute favourite section of Ikea – I type erratically as heart palpitates – is the ‘office organisation’ area. The boxes & buckets section.
In most Ikea stores – I’ve studied this – you enter Mecca after escaping the food court disaster. Run from fat kids shoving 50¢ hot dogs down their throats and fly down a staircase, then around a corner. There, angels, sing.
It’s heaven. Neat white shapes and perfect clear boxes. Stuff to store other stuff in.
Boxes and buckets that stack!
And make your life better!
My local Ikea is an easy drive or train ride away, so my boxes-and-buckets collection approaches an I. Marcos level of excess. I’ve got the lot. (Hey, I work at home, it’s an easily justified addiction – my office is corralled and cannot spread).
Yet, while I love the concept of storing-stuff-in-other-stuff – my cheap-o student relics looked both cheap & ugly. Definitely low-end Ikea. Didn’t really mesh with my creative-r-than-thou aesthetic.
The cheap hack for cheap Ikea
As luck would have it, on a recent rainy-day trawl through a local antique shop, I found a box of old books & notebooks in a back room. Amongst it was a pre-WWII book report, done in fountain pen, from a fellow UBC student. Very cool – and very musty – history.
“Is Germany Prosperous?” the 40-page essasy asked, dissecting a book published in 1922.
Antique buffs, look away now.
$5 later, the relic was on its way home with me – detouring first to a craft shop where I picked up some mod podge glue.
A few hours of delightful cutting & pasting, Billie Holiday in the background for effect, and I had brand new office storage. Ta da!!!
I can’t tell you of the author’s ruling as to German prosperity – his handwriting was hard to read – but I love the result. Not only inheriting a strange piece of my university’s history, but a great makeover for under $10.
What do you think?