Create A Chic Countertop Storage Box To Clear The Clutter With This Crafty DIY

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There are few messy spaces that can bother you like your countertops. Whether it be in your kitchen or bathroom, having a countertop littered with random items from makeup to car keys and everything in between will drive you crazy. In fact, a messy, cluttered house has actually been found to cause detrimental mental health effects, such as increased anxiety, disrupted sleep, and memory problems. As such, cleaning up your counters, even with something as small as a repurposed butter dish to organize your bathroom sink-side clutter, can be really beneficial in improving your day. And with this inspired DIY from tutacuteart on Instagram, you'll gain a clever and stylish fold-over storage box to hold keys, wallets, brushes, accessories, or whatever odd and ends you may toss on your counters.

To create the structure of the box, you will need several large craft sticks, such as WISYOK jumbo craft sticks. For the main material, the creator uses a woven bamboo placemat, similar to the LFH Home bamboo decorative placemat. Woven bamboo offers a chic, biophilic aesthetic and a practical structure that is flexible length-wise but rigid width-wise, making it easy to shape into a box. This design is a simple fold-over box with two rigid side walls and a large run of the bamboo mat to form the front, bottom, back, and top of the box. You will just need some hot glue to hold everything together and a short cord and button to fasten the lid.

To put this together like tutacuteart did on Instagram, you will want to start by cutting the bamboo placemats to size in three pieces. Two pieces will be identical and function as the left and right sides of the box, measured to the length of your craft sticks. These are used to reinforce these side pieces, by gluing them down, side by side, to each side piece of the woven mat. Glue the sticks perpendicular to the bamboo stalks to make a sturdy side wall. Plan the layout of the sides to create your desired box height and depth.

The main structure of the bamboo mat can be measured by pre-rolling the rigid wall over itself on the mat, showing you the length needed to cover all sides of the box. To finish the box, glue the larger piece of the woven mat to the side pieces to make the top, back, bottom, and front sections. You could also glue in extra craft sticks or small wood cuts as corner blocking to reinforce the wall joints on the interior.

All you have left to do is add the finishing touches, and you'll be ready to start managing all the things cluttering your kitchen and taking up valuable counter space in the bathroom. Tie a decorative loop in your cord, and hot glue it to the box lid. Then, glue the button into place so the cord slips over it to hold the box closed. If you want a different way to close the box, glue down some Velcro strips or magnetic catches. Once complete, use your new box to help you free up space in your kitchen and bathroom.