Sunday, May 19, 2013

Keeping you charged!

Once again, I'm teaming up with Office Depot, who is challenging me each month to come up with creative ways to use their office products! Secretly, I LOVE this challenge -- and I've got some really GREAT ideas brewing in my mind all the time, but this month I decided to do something pretty practical, simple, cheap, and easy! Isn't that what you want? Of course it is!




So, I organized my nightstand! What? Doesn't seem that exciting? Well, what makes it super fun and exciting is that I also added a charging station IN the top drawer of my nightstand. 



Here is what my nightstand looked like before. It's not terrible. I have it pretty organized but recently got a mini Ipad that I now keep next to me and use as my alarm clock in my bedroom. So, the problem is that I want to charge it overnight but don't want to keep it on top of the nighstand {or night table you may call it} all the time. I'm sure many of you use your smart phones by your bed, also, to charge and use as an alarm clock, am I right?



So, how did I do it? How much did it cost? And was it hard? I got a 6 foot extension cord in brown, to match the inside and outside of my nightstand, and some Scotch reclosable fasteners. I only wound up using half of one pack, not two, but I have extras to do this to my husband's nightstand and other drawers if I want to later.



I used my drill - yep, I have my own drill - and used this drill bit to make a round hole the size that the plug could fit through. 



It was super easy. I took the drawer out before I drilled this - so make sure you do that! It wasn't even that messy! 



I took the extension cord - which is a three plug outlet - and I put the Scotch fasteners on the back. Easy, right?



And what do you get when you use some binder clips and pretty tape? You get organized cords inside your drawer. 



I took them and clipped the specific cords for each device and color coded them. But, be careful not to actually pinch the cord. Just go around it like I have above using a large enough binder clip.



In the drawer it's great to have them to keep the cords from going all over, plus using the binder clips is quick and easy to unwrap them when you need to. 



The rest of the drawers needed some organizing as well. I took this pretty box from Office Depot that has a beautiful pattern in it. Plus, what I really loved about it was that it had a divider that you could take out and divide however you need to.



Now my bottom drawer of my nightstand has become quite a mess. I use it to store any very special cards and things from my hubby and kids. Nice, huh? Even I have areas in my home that need improvement - there is just only so much time I can devote to this stuff and when I don't, it winds up like this.



So, here was my solution! I used these project cases to sort the cards.



I sorted the kids special cards to me and my Hubby's to me - using Post-It Notes. Now it's neat and organized and isn't making a big mess of things in that bottom drawer.



So, to answer my questions above. Was it easy? YES. The extension cord charging station took me 20 minutes to put together. Was it hard? No -- everything just took a little time to do. How much did it cost? The top drawer charging station was under $20. The other pieces - the box I used to divide and keep my things in the top drawer was also a steal! The bottom drawer project cases were really inexpensive, as well. Not bad, right? Do you have a drawer that would be perfect for a charging station?


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{*I have been compensated by Office Depot, to come up with fabulous ways to organize things*}

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