My New Year's Resolution

I've resolved to get the apartment a little more organized and a lot less messy (mostly my fault). So far so good. I worked in the spare room for a long time yesterday, getting all my craft stuff for the Etsy business in order. With a few good ideas from some magazines, a little creative shopping, and a few desperate designs, I actually managed to make the spare room look like an actual room again and not just a dumping grounds.

It's still not the most fashionable room in the world, but it serves it's purpose a little better now. Pictured below is my "creative corner."


This is where the desperate design comes into play. I needed more storage space, and I also needed to keep some boxes on hand to mail out packages. Thus, the cardboard bookshelves were born.

I picked up this idea from a Better Homes and Gardens magazine. I repurposed a shower rack to hold my smaller materials and clear up some desk space.
These boxes I bought at Target for about $2 a piece. They were originally Christmas gift boxes with holiday designs on them. But for that price, they were a more economical alternative to the archival-quality photo boxes that I originally had my eye on, so I decided to give them a try anyway. I covered them in pretty scrapbooking paper and I think they turned out nicely.



The stack of boxes keeps all the little odds and ends out-of-sight.