$5 Large DIY Storage that will blow your mind

Hello, welcome back to today's crafty organizer. I'm stupidly excited to share what I've made with you. Now I'm going to make this completely messy. I usually show you how I do something, but I want you to see the value. I've used it before, so be sure to stay until the end if you want to see how I made this. I've used foam core

storage

many times with you guys and the total Tiffany dupe I did a couple weeks ago got me thinking what if? I made this on a

large

r scale and reinforced it so you could make a bigger

storage

space for whatever you need so that's what I made today so here's this giant bookshelf I made and it's now made entirely of core foam.

I've reinforced the daylight of this because I want to try it, you heard me right. I'm going to do this live with you. I already have a ton of containers and items stored in things and I have weighed each one of them. So as I place things here, you'll see with me how much weight it can hold. My goal is 20 pounds because I think if you could store 20 pounds of

your

craft supplies for just five dollars. foam core I'm excited, I hope you're excited too, make sure to hit the like button if you do, but we're going to do this live so it's going to be an epic fail and at that point you'll win.

You don't have to stay until the end to see how we do it or it

will

be a huge success and you

will

stay until the end to see how we did it, so let's start now. I've set this up so I created supports under three of the shelves, the top three, although this is the top of the shelf, I designed it so you could put things on top of it, so again, if you're interested in how I did it, stick around all the way, but now load this up and see how much any shelf can hold now.

I always recommend placing the heaviest on the bottom first, this adds stability to a shelf no matter what material it is made of. The other thing you want to do is make sure

your

heaviest things are on the outside of the shelves with the lighter things in the middle and, again, it's not just when you use something made with foam core or cardboard, this is if are you using oak, mdf or pine, yes I have ever had shelves that have bowed in the middle it is because the weight was too much in the center especially if it is a wide shelf it just can't support it so keep things heavier outwards and the lightest ones in the middle so here are my containers and here are the rubber stamps these are in block so they will be heavier now whatever you put in this bottom is irrelevant because Your unit will be on a table or desk if you're using it like on a sideboard or on the floor, so you could probably load a lot more on this bottom shelf as long as it's not tilted to one side, so if you put books here, I would use bookends so the weight is not right.

I'm not pressing on the outside because this is a foam core after all, but right now we have five pounds on the bottom with the two containers full of rubber seals. Now I know I said to do things heavier in the background, but I really want to do it. Try this for yourselves so you know if it's worth it or not, so I'm going to put all my paints on this shelf. I basically emptied everything from the gutters that I made and started pulling supplies from around my office. In fact, I ran out of supplies. So, most of the things that I use regularly and that are around me have been consolidated on this shelf, so let's go with paints for the paints.

I'm using the dollar tree soda can holder and guess what, I figured it out perfectly. It holds 32 bottles of acrylic paint. I thought it was amazing. I actually did, except this kid weighs five pounds on his own, so I was expecting there to be five pounds on each shelf, but we're going to push the limits on this one. one because I want to see what it will do for you, so here I am doing this live and I'm nervous, here's the first five pounds out, okay, so far, so good, sorry, I'm still going up and down. it's all around me, so this one had the rest of my paintings, it had some of the bigger bottles and it has my ceramic water bottle, so this one was, I think I was marking on the back, look, I went Smart, this one weighed three pounds, uh. and again I show you pictures so you know I'm not lying about these three pounds plus the other one that makes eight pounds for this shelf, okay so far so good, okay, I have one more to add to this one and this one also weighed three pounds, it's all my adhesives and my tape so this one is a little bit heavier oh that makes 11 okay so this one weighs just over 11 pounds in one casing okay okay this is the heaviest shelf heavy, so if this manages to stay this long and don't buckle, then oh my gosh, guys, I'll be so excited about you again.

I didn't design these to support heavier weight, but I want you to see that when I build them, they actually are. really strong if you end up putting more weight here, what you could do is build a support out of a square that's exactly the same height and you could put this here to give it more stability. I am very excited. right now, okay, sorry, let me go to the top shelf now for this one I made tapes and used those soda can holders again and I'm sorry I keep bending over, but I had everything around me so it would work better for the video, so I weighed all three together and they weighed three pounds total and again, this is just the refrigerator soda holder.

I think they're amazing for so many different things so this one weighs only three pounds total so I totally know this rack can handle it since it already holds 11 pounds so now I'm going to the top uh and when you see the tutorial, I reinforced three of the shelves, I didn't reinforce the bottom because like I said, this is going to rest on any surface you have, whether it's a desk, a table or the floor, but I reinforced this shelf, this shelf and the top shelf so you can use it as storage as well, so for the top I'm If you're going to play around with the setup a little bit, you can see that you can put two of the locker containers together or you can do three of the soda containers, but you can also do a combination where you have two of the soda container holders and a locker. the top is a little bit wider because it doesn't have sides, so I'm going to make a locker with pens, markers and pencils, and this one weighs three and a half pounds and I made it so that I have things in containers so you can take them out.

I want this to be really functional so you're not just trying it out and seeing how strong it is, so while I was putting things together, I was really doing things however I wanted. stuff organized on a shelf so I had easy access to it so this one goes on top and again the heavier stuff on the outside, the latter again I ran out of stuff in my area but these are my little sanding blocks and sandpaper. it will actually be located right in the middle of this last container. I want to show you how to split additional categories inside.

You know I love inside storage bags, but this is a little different version, so I bought two different food storage containers and gave it a try. two different ones because I know different stores have different things so the rubber maid is called carry and is a 2.9 cup and the betty crocker is called easy seal and has three and 3.4 cups of storage inside. I only bought two sets, but if you had more, you could put one more of these containers inside, but then I only put things that I'm going to use frequently, these are my little ornaments, I have my little pieces of twine and ribbon, I have glue sticks and then the last one I have my washi tape so it fits five, but I had four, so this weighs three and three pounds, the pens were 3.4 pounds, so it comes to 6.7 pounds, which if the part bottom out 5 and then 11.7 uh 3 and 6.7 I can't do math.

I think that's a little over 25 pounds, which means I've already exceeded what I expected it to hold. This is all. I can't even believe it. What do you think of this? I'm really excited. As I was building this I kept thinking about strength, strength, strength, I did a lot of the same techniques that I did with the totally tiffany container that I duped, but I got suggestions about using pins, so I bought pins to strengthen all the seams, but the ones that I bought were too long and too wide and kept sticking out at strange angles.

I couldn't get them straight and I was worried about stabbing myself, so I doubled the foam core in certain places and added a small strip of wood for furring, so stay until the end if you want to see the full tutorial and how I did it, but again I haven't Done the math yet, but this foam core shelving unit weighs over 25 pounds right now. I'm delighted with this, you can easily slide things to get access to it and slide it back in and you guys, if you covered this with any kind of contact paper it would get even stronger or if you undocked it with something it would become smooth. stronger, I used five sheets of foam core to make this, so for five dollars I bought a small 20 by 30 inch shelving unit and you could make as many as you needed and place them on a table to have a ton of storage.

I have one. The last thing I want to show you with this before we get into how to do it is that there is dead space on some of these shelves and I know a lot of you like to have things on pegs, whether it's to hold scissors or tape. or your washi tapes because they are made of a foam core, you can't use a tension bar here because the tension works by pushing outwards and since this is just a foam core, it would cut it, compromise everything and it would collapse, but I had an idea where I put it, oh, I had the idea to take bottle caps, you know, the kind you take out of soda bottles or water bottles, and I just cut a hole in the cap, took my little scissors and cut . two sides bent the tab back and it broke.

I've done it twice and what I'm going to do is glue these bottle caps to the inside of my bookshelf so that a little peg can go through that hole and rest inside now. This is not for much weight. I'm already very impressed with the amount of weight it supports. I wouldn't make this over a pound, mainly because I don't know how the glue on it would hold up. weight of that, so I'm going to use hot glue and we're going to check this out. I'm going to measure very quickly. I'll do it off camera so it's level, but I'll glue it in and place it.

Come on in and see how it works, so I'll be right back, so I went ahead and grabbed my washi rolls and put them back here. This is a bamboo stick I just had lying around, so it's not exactly straight, but that's okay, I want to show it off. You know how this works, so I glued these soda or water bottle caps on the inside and now what I'm going to do is in these openings that were in each one. I'm just going to let it slide and rest inside the bottle cap. It totally works, I'm very happy with this, I hope you're excited about this and you can see some benefits and you'll stick with how I do it, so let's start with that.

I used five sheets of foam core, now I know. Not everyone has access to foam core. I think you could use cardboard. I don't know how strong it would be because that's not what I'm testing, but five sheets of foam core. I also used my hot glue gun. I used several glue sticks, I think I probably went through about eight on this project, shipping tape, and if you have more success, straight pins are an absolute option. I also used my square and my Fiskars knife. The first thing I did was measure the depth of the containers.

I was using, which for me was 12 inches, so I went ahead and transferred it and cut both boards to have a total of four shelves that were 12 inches deep by 20 inches, which is the width of the board, then I cut the flush. strips I already had one of these, but you can get them for about 98 cents at your hardware store and this is just for demonstration, but I'm showing you that I'm going to glue a furring strip to the bottom of each one. to add hot glue to that furring strip and I'm just going to stick it right in the middle of the shelf.

If you plan on adding more weight, you can add a furring strip to the front and back and use another full sheet, but I'm just using the medium one to keep it super strong. I'm going to do this on all three shelves and anywhere I noticed it lifting up, I added a little more and added a bead along the front. side but look how strong it is now it's time to create the backup. I used a full size sheet and marked at 10 and 20 inches, this is where the middle two shelves will go so this sheet doesn't get cut off.

I know a top, but I'm going to start in the middle first and make these first two pieces, so I just run a bead of hot glue along the edge, line it up with the two points, and press it into place. I need to hold thisfor a few seconds and pulled out my square just to make sure the shelf was as straight as possible. Repeat this with the second shelf and then use the shipping glue on the edges of the top and bottom now I'm going to put the bottom on, you'll notice this piece has no support and then I can put on the top piece for each of these , even if you don't see it, I use shipping tape. now I'm going to mark the edge of each of the shelves in case there are any discrepancies and then I'm going to cut this twice so that I have the sides of my bookshelf once I have them completely cut out. ready to start assembling the rest of this bookcase after you've finished cutting the sides for this you're going to go ahead and mark points 10 and 20 again and this is to make sure your shelves are straight once you've glued them together.

I'm going to run a long bead of glue along the back of the shelf and this is to make sure I can get that seam all the way down and make sure it's level and square, once I have it secure I can start to put up one shelf at a time and I'm just going to repeat this process on all four of them over and over again, if you don't see me doing it, I promise I not only ran a bead of hot glue around each seam, but I also reinforced it after putting the glue with the shipping tape.

You do it in that order first with hot glue and then with the shipping tape on top. Once I had all four shelves ready, it was time to do the exact same thing on the other side, so I measured at the 10 and 20 marks just to do. I make sure everything is perfectly square and start with the back first. The reason you do this is to make sure you have room to make adjustments later, so if this is completely flush, everything else will be perfect, so I'm going to start with that top and then change the angle here so you can see, but I have already attached this.

I'm going to run a bead of glue all over before I put the shipping tape on and through a lot of glue, so now I'm running this, I'm running the glue along the bottom and then pushing it down and running another bead Add extra glue along the top and bottom of the shelf, here's the last one. so I already have the glue, I'm going to put it on top and then I'm going to go ahead and put that whole blob of glue in that corner and then off camera I'm going to add the shipping tape. I don't even know.

What more can I say? I'm so excited about this. I finally did the math. It weighed 26.1 pounds in this foam core rack for five dollars and again, if you buy the containers at your dollar store, it will be more expensive. I like it. the look of these, I think these Dollar Tree lockers are great, I use them for a multitude of things, you can also put little tags on them and dress them up or you know I love making handles if you're interested in how to put handles on things. I have a link to that video in the description below, but it will be interesting to see how it holds up over time.

I'm going to leave this for a couple of days. Make sure you go to my Facebook. page and register. I'll probably post in three or four days how it's doing over time, but this tickles me so thank you so much for watching today, I hope you didn't think I was too much. a geek who is giddy over a five dollar storage unit, but I am so excited about this and can't get over this rack. Anyway, I'm very excited, thank you all so much for watching, thank you to my sponsors who allow me to make these videos and I'll watch them in a few days.

Goodbye, my God, I can't believe it, I can't believe it.