Love your Journey: DIY Mail Organizers

Clutter, clutter, clutter! Lately I have been simply fed up with all the mail and bills that collect on our counter top, desk top and windowsill..... yes our windowsills are unique and extra long which I though would be great for decorative things... hubby thinks it's a great place to store mail he would rather put off till tomorrow. Well too often tomorrow turns into next week or next month and I am left looking at that mess the entire time. Can anyone else relate???

So I needed a fix and I needed one fast. After searching a few stores and coming up with nothing I decided to search the wed for some home made ideas. I soon found that I was in good company and there were a ton of great tutorials available. I got my Mail Organizer Plan from www.imaclevermoma.com. click here to read her tutorial. She made her organizers from cereal boxes but I was looking for something smaller so I took her easy to understand instructions and applied it to a Kleenex box.

First I measure out the front. I drew a line 3cm down from the top of the box. Then again 3cm from the side a made a dot on the line I just drew.

I then drew a line from the dot to the top corner of the box.

Now simply cut along the lines. You can really do this part however you wish. It all depends on the look you are going for.

IMPORTANT: I did find that these boxes were a little flimsy when all was said and done. They definitely did the job but I did make some more, this time reinforcing them first and I liked the second ones better. So if it's worth it to you, take the extra time. All I did was take another box, cut it up and hot glued the extra pieces to the inside of my original box. I didn't take a lot of time to measure. Just eyeball it because you really wont see any imperfections at the end of it all. I just did the back, sides and front and didn't bother with the base.

Do a quick check to make sure you will have enough fabric to wrap into the box...

...... and along the side. At this point I marked the fabric where the four back corners of the box lie. This way I could always use the box as a reference.

I then measured from the box the the edge of the fabric on the right side and used that measurement to mark the left side.

Draw a line from that point to the top.

Now measure enough fabric to wrap up the front of the box. Obviously you do this by measuring the bottom and front face of the box, add it together and give a little extra to wrap over the edge.

For future reference I'll call this the tongue since it is the longest piece of fabric.

The sides can be cut on the line however from this point you will want to cut about half and inch away from the line.

You will need this extra fabric so make sure you don't cut on the lines here.

Your finished cut should look like this.

Now for the fun part. Begin gluing along the top.

Fold in your fabric.

Rap the sides around and glue along the edge.

You may want to leave this extra fabric for now. You may want to just fold it in and glue it or you may decide to cut it off.

Once I was ready to glue the bottom I first cut a notch in the corner.

Then glue the bottom. The photo above shows the left side of the box and the bottom shows the right side. Just in case that confused anyone.

Now glue along the inside of the line. Then quickly fold your fabric on the line. This will create a nice clean edge for the front of the box. All the cut edges will be tucked in :)

Now glue the bottoms and sides.

You should have extra fabric at the top so cut diagonally to the corners of the front opening,

fold them down and glue. This is where you had extra fabric on the top right and left corner earlier and I said to leave it. At this point, when you fold in the last of the fabric on the top you may decide to cut the underneath fabric or just fold it in with the rest. I did both, just depending; If it looked too bulky I cut the fabric. The only problem is you run the risk of having some frayed pieces sticking out at the top if you are not careful.