How to make a folder holder.

My bookshelves are no where near big enough to store folders on. This means I don’t really have anywhere to put them and they normally just end up on a pile on the floor – but not anymore. I was about to throw out the box my Converse sneakers came in when I discovered it could hold three folders up right – the exact number of folders I use! To make your own folder holder you will need:

• One Converse sneaker box with the lid cut off.
• A big sheet of wrapping paper (mine was £1.60ish from Tescos. 1mx1.7m)
• Scissor
• Sellotape
• A gluestick.
• A pencil.

Before you start cutting out your wrapping paper, sellotape up all the raw edges of the box and any joints or weak spots. This just makes the box a wee bit stronger and gives you smoother edges to work against.

Begin by placing the box in the middle of the paper and drawing around it. Then tip it on all of it’s various sides and draw around it there too. You’re aiming to create a net which you can wrap around your box. Here’s a badly drawn example of what I did:

This is where I make everything much more complicated than it needs to be. The black square is the base; the red ones are the sides (and yes there should be two on each side); the blue squares the ends and the pink lines are tabs. You just wrap this cut out shape around the box, sellotaping and gluing the various tabs down to hold the paper to the box. I started with the sides, bringing them up and wrapping them inside the box – the two sides on each half line the inside of the box for you! I did the ends after all the side’s tabs were secure. The more technical amongst us would probably have doubled up the ends as well, leaving only the inside bottom of the box to line with a single rectangle of paper glued down… but I didn’t have a big enough piece of paper for that and had to do the inside ends and bottom separately.

Still, I think it came out fantastically for a spur of the moment piece of crafting. Tell me what you think!

A little guide to cleaning.

See the full sized image by Miss Chien at flickr here. 

Spick and span.
I took the afternoon off of university yesterday due to feeling a bit ill and being extremely tired. Rather than lie in bed or watch TV though, I tidied up my room, because it seriously looked like a bomb had hit it. So I’m going to tell you all a few of my top tips for tidying.

Piles.
Piles of stuff, to be more precise. My favourite way to tidy is to first sort the mess into piles. Whether it’s piles of clothes, papers or make up, or if you make piles by where things are stored, it gets everything that goes together, well, together! This means that when you’re hanging clothes back up in the cupboard you can decide which items should have which hangers (depending on the garment), or you can put all that university work into the right order without having to go back when you find a page of notes hiding under the bed.

Realistic targets.
If you’re room is really bad it’s unlikely you’re going to get it all done in one go, so it’s a good idea to make some realistic time targets to work too. Promising yourself one episode of Friends once you’ve tidied up your desk is a good incentive to work quicker!

A tidy room also means there’s nothing for you to procrastinate with if you have an essay due or if you’re supposed to be studying!

I hope everyone has a good weekend. I’m working a full weekend this week to deal with the New Moon crowds. I would avoid your local cinema!

To throw, sell, charity, keep.

See the full sized image by Mycelin★@Flickr here.

That is so 2004.
I’ve just moved back from university to my home for the summer. Somehow, my clothes that I left here seem to have mated and produced ugly children, while the clothes that I brought home from uni must have never actually been part of my wardrobe here. I just have too many clothes. I know, I thought it was impossible too. I decided to sit down and work it all out.

Inventory.
Firstly, I sat down on my bed and made a bit of a mental note about the clothes I had and the actual storage space I had. Actual storage space is somewhere which is designed for clothes – if you have to start using your bookcase as an accessory stand then you have too many. After a careful survey, I found I had two spacious wardrobes with two storage shelves, a chest of drawers with six drawers and a small chest of drawers with two separate drawers. Clothes wise, I had two wardrobes, five of the large drawers, the small chest of drawers and two large-ish holdalls of clothes. There was only one thing for it. Stuff had to go – and in a big way. I estimated that I needed to get rid of at least one wardrobe full of clothes.

You have to make a decision.
Now came the part that was definitely going to cause the most problems – what to keep, sell, give to charity and throw away. I had a set criteria for each category:

• Keep – things that I currently wear, things which were expensive and/or special gifts (just in case!) and things which I might not wear anymore but bring back good memories
• Sell – things which are fairly current in style, things which are brand new but I don’t like anymore
• Charity – things which may not be in style, might not be brand new but are in excellent condition
• Throw away – manky things, ripped, torn, holes, etc.

The things to throw away were definitely the easiest – anything I had left behind while at uni and didn’t fit into the keep, sell or charity categories went straight into a big black bag. There was an unhealthy number of scuffed up jeans going into the big black bags, along with some rather unsightly knitted items which will never see the light of day again.

Beginning of the real work.
My real work is about to begin though. I have about 30 or 40 pieces of clothing which I’m planning on selling. That’s 30 or 40 pictures, plus 30 or 40 descriptions, plus 30 or 40 packages… I think you get the point. But believe it or not, I have a system for that too, which I’ll post about later.

The point?
The real point though that I’m trying to make is you should only have clothes that you actually wear or like, and you should only have them stored in places where clothes are meant to be stored.