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Thursday, November 24, 2011

Tutorial: Creating Custom Storage Boxes

I needed a place to keep my baby's clean cloth diapers near my diapering station but there was very limited room to work with. Whatever was going to work had to fit between the desk we are using as a change table and the door frame beside it, only 26 cm. I couldn't find anything in stores so I made a container out of the box our car seat came in. It didn't talk long at all and turned out better than I expected. Here is how I did it. If you need a custom container you could repeat this tutorial with your own specific dimensions.

Step 1- Lay the original box flat on the ground with the sturdiest corners on the outside. I wanted the length and width to be 25 cm so I drew a line in pencil 25 cm from each outside edge on both sides and cut out the remainder in the middle. The middles can be discarded or set aside for another project.
Step 2- I cut the two outside pieces to the height desired and discarded the excess. It doesn't matter if you trim the top of the box or the bottom as log as you are consistent with both pieces.
Step 3- Lay the two pieces beside each other with two cut ends touching and tape together with some duct tape.
Step 4- Fold into a box then tape to keep it together. The base flaps (or top flaps depending on which side y0u cut) of the original box will fold to form the base of your new box. Keep the base together with a few pieces of tape.
Step 5- The rest is easy. Simply reinforce the base by putting a piece of duct tape over every corner. I covered my box in white paper then reinforced the corners with a strip of duct tape over each corner edge of the box. I finished the rough edges on top with more black duct tape.
And here is the finished product. It is tidy looking which is what I was going for, and fits the space perfectly. The pail below keeps the dirty diapers before they are washed. We recently started using the cloth diapers and this set up is serving us well so far. The only problem is the cats like the box so I have to make a lid to keep them out.

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