diaper box storage bins

If you're like me, you always hesitate before throwing away a perfectly good box.  And over the last eighteen months, this problem has gotten worse with a kid in diapers.  These boxes are great for storing outgrown clothes, but so far that's the only use I could find for them.

Then I saw this post on a blog called Positively Splendid.  Of course.  Turn those ugly boxes into something I could always use more of...storage bins!

Let me just say this before I continue...I rushed through this project so it's not my best work.  If I had been more careful and took my time, they may have ended up as pretty as the ones on the other blog.  But really, the main place that needs storage options right now is our guest room closet:

Um yeah.  Hideous.  One day we will invest in some more shelving, but for now this is what we have to work with.  So I figured I'd make a couple of these storage bins and see what happened.  And the fact they were going to go up on a closet shelf made my approach to this project kind of lax and "who cares."  :o)

First, I found a couple of diaper boxes.  Then rather than spend a lot of money on canvas fabric, I paid around nine bucks for a canvas dropcloth instead.  I still have tons of it left and I didn't even buy the largest size they had, so it was a good investment.  I covered the boxes with the canvas using the instructions on the blog, and after doing so I realized a couple of things:

1.  Spray-on adhesive lets off fumes, so do it outside next time.
2.  As heavy as canvas is, the pictures on the box might still show through, so next time maybe cover them with white paper or something.  If you look very closely at mine, you can see very subtle outlines of a smiling baby and other tell-tale shapes of a diaper box.  But again, these were going to go up on a closet shelf.  No biggie.

So after I covered the outside of the boxes, I became very unmotivated to do the fabric lining.  Maybe because no matter how carefully I measured, my attempt at the lining didn't fit in the box right.  As a result, these went in the closet for a few weeks, and I almost threw them away.  Then last week I decided to just finish them, so I cut out strips of the fabric, sewed a hem down one side of each strip, and hot-glued them on.  And ended up with this.

I know, I know...you can still see the cardboard inside the boxes, and worse, you can see the ragged edges of the fabric strips.  As well as the crooked edges of the pockets I put in the front with leftover fabric.  But I don't care...they still hold stuff:

And they helped my closet look less like disaster zone:

Well that, and getting rid of some stuff...and I'm not even going to show you the bed in that room.  It may or may not still have a bunch of junk on it too.  It's a work in progress.

So now that I know how to make these, I might make another one for this closet.  We'll see.  :o)