Before and After: DIY this Chest of Drawers to Declutter your Workspace
Updated on June 25, 2021
New year, new resolutions, lots of things we promise ourselves we’ll do in 2018. We’ve all been there: diet, excersice, drink more water, pick up a hobby.. What’s yours? To me this year’s definitely going to be trying to be less messy at home as at work, so why not start immediately with a very helpful desk tool: a chest of drawers, perfect for sorting out stuff under categories.
So I decided to personalize it and labeled each drawer using the wood-transfer technique, then spruced everything up with a little washi tape magic. You can do it yourself as it’s very easy and requires no particular artistry talent ;-) Read on and discover how to nail your desk decluttering.. The diy way!
Supplies:
- wood drawers
- printable drawer’s words
- waxed paper
- ink jet printer
- washi tape
- scissors
- pencil
- A4 cardboard sheet
1. Start by preparing your wax paper to be accepted by the printer as regular paper by adding a rectangular shape taped to the cardboard. Make sure the tape covers up all the edges so they won’t get stuck.
2. Print out the phrases we’ve prepared for you or make your own, but remember to print them reversed. You might need to help your printer by pushing in the cardboard while it prints.
3. Take the wax off the cardboard and cut out around the printed words, reverse the wax paper and gently press it on your wood drawers, keeping it in place with some tape. Make sure you press with the fingers or with a soft rubber all the letters so they will transfer. Then firmly pull off the wax paper. Magic happens!
4. Go ahead and repeat to all drawers. In the end I decided to add some decorative washi tape to each drawer and to the overall chest just to add that extra touch, but that’s kind of optional and based on your tastes.
This tecnhique is awesome as you can pretty much play around with it, for example decorating also the sides of the chest of drawers with words like “fragile” “this way up” as it was a precious delivery, or even play around with your messiness with quotes like “My things are arranged in an abstract manner intentionally as part of my unquenchable thirs for creative expression”. Have fun!
