Homemade Storage Bin

It's silly but I wanted to update folks on my toy bin creation from a few months back. At the time I thought the paint was going to chip off pretty quickly because the spots I hadn't coated well with modge podge chipped a bit right away. But in fact it's held up great! I find it amusing in a sad way how often I feel strongly inclined to purchase "nice" bins and storage units. It really makes sense because our homes are very important places and nice bins and different organization methods do make us feel better about our homes and ourselves for "taking care of" our homes. But myself, being frugal and trying to pay off debts knows how silly it is to want a clear $3.49 plastic container with pictures of cartoon farm animals on it so I can store my kiddos toy animals. I love coming up with creative cheap/ free ways of organizing and storing things. I do get the same sense of "yay I'm taking care of my home" plus there is an added sense of satisfaction knowing that I used my noodle and came up with a creative alternative to spending money.

For this car bin I used an old can of spray paint and sprayed a clean empty Maxwell House coffee container.

I drew a picture of one of my sons cars onto a scrap of paper and glued it to the container after the paint dried.

Then I whipped up some homemade modge podge. It's just elmers glue and water. There are different ratios online. I think I used a half/ half ratio: half water, half glue. I store the modge podge in an old apple sauce jar. After the spray paint dried I painted the entire outside surface of the container with the modge podge. I think if I had done two layers it wouldn't have chipped at all oh, and if I hadn't used like 10 year old spray paint.

My son makes peeling stickers off of my husbands guitar cases a past time but he hasn't been able to get even a corner of this car "label" up. So the homemade modge podge is officially tested and works pretty great.

I intend to make a few more of these as I go through more coffee containers. I'll probably use different colors of paper. This container is actually really nice because it has a lid and it also has a handle in back. It's very convenient for a 2 year old during, "clean up, clean up, everybody clean up" time. <-that's a little song we sing while cleaning up toys. For some reason every kid I've ever cleaned up toys with is uber motivated by that song. It works well for my son too. It's funny though because I'll catch him singing it to himself while he's picking up his toys all alone. Hey, it works.

I'll post an update photo of my lovely coffee bins once I've crafted a few more of them for his room. I do not have any empty ones right now.

Average daily spending for May: $18.04