Putting Stuff Where It Belongs: Making Drawer Organizers

This post is for my best friend Kate. We were talking about organizing yesterday and it inspired me to figure out a solution for the drawer in my bedside table.  It's been a really minor annoyance and I never really cared enough to put forth more effort than looking for a little tray at the dollar store. 

Husband Jeff built us an awesome pair of bedside tables.  In my top drawer I've got the usual stuff like hand lotion, lip balm, pen to write in my journal, earplugs, and headphones for when watch movies in bed on the iPad. It's enough stuff where you want to keep it a little corralled, so my initial solution was to grab a fancy little spiral dish from my collection of serving ware. It worked fine, but the stuff rattled around when you opened the drawer and it was annoying.  And really loud in the middle of the night. The worst item is the little glass bottle sitting next to my purple lip balm, glass rattling on glass is really bothersome.   Yes, I could have removed it and easily solved that problem, but ya never know when you might need cuticle oil!

Before: drawer setup is only ok.  Blah.

My solution idea came from Pinterest, people use the bottom of boxes they would normally toss in the recycling and cut them down to be the right height and tuck them in the drawer. Here's an example from I Heart Organizing, DIY Cereal Box Drawer Dividers.

My resources from the recycling bin.

I rescued this morning's cereal box and two sparkling water boxes from the recycling bin.  I measured the height of the drawer (2.75 inches) and made my cut mark at 2.5 inches.  

I loved noticing the "please recycle" statement on the sparkling water packaging while I was measuring for the cut line.  I'm definitely recycling/reusing, they're going on to live more useful lives in my bedroom. 

"Please Recycle".  Is reusing better?

Cut, cut, cut.  I only ended up needing two of the three boxes.

Cut down to the right size.

Then I removed everything from the drawer and reorganized. Love it!

After: better organization!

And the best part is that it doesn't rattle around!  I could get fancy and cover them with Contact paper or wrapping paper, but I am terrible at wrapping gifts and my crafts don't really turn out either, so these might just look better plain than with my decorating.