So having an almost two year old leaves the problem of having toys all over the house. I could keep them in her room, but her room is upstairs and we spend most of our time in the living room downstairs. We had her toys in boxes out in the open but they just looked cluttered... we finally moved the boxes to behind the couch and moved the couch away from the wall so she has a little bit of a play area behind there. It makes the room look so much less cluttered storing them out of the way and she can still easily get at them.
She does have little toys which don't work well in boxes because they get lost in the bottom and the pieces get separated and then she never plays with them. So I came up with a cheap solution. I eat oatmeal everyday... I hate oatmeal, but it's for my cholesterol... so I continually have a surplus of empty oatmeal containers. Well, I started storing her little toys, like her tea set, her legos, and puzzle pieces in these oatmeal containers. I discovered they fit perfectly on the bottom shelves of our book shelves... (we're big book people... so have lots of book shelves all over the house). But people would kind of look at us funny, seeing rows of oatmeal containers sitting out, so I solved that problem with this little craft.
I started with an empty oatmeal container. I peeled the paper off.
I cut scrapbook paper to fit my container. I had to use about one and a half sheets per container to cover the whole thing.
I put a layer of Mod Podge onto the oatmeal container to stick the paper to it. I smoothed out the paper as best as I could, and then covered the paper with another layer of Mod Podge.
I let dry and I loved how they turned out. I picked colors to kind of match my living room and I think it looks so pretty in a neat row on the shelf. So much better then a row of oatmeal containers!!
I did have one little issue, the paper bubbled a little bit in places, but I've never used Mod Podge before, so anyone have any tips to get rid of this issue in the future?
I loved this project, it was easy to do while watching tv, and cheap too. We'll see how long they stand up to a two year old, but if I have to make more, I have plenty more oatmeal containers and paper so that I can quickly replace any that get too beat up.