Home – How To Bring New Life To An Old Filing Cabinet

I have been busy getting my house into an organised state. I am a bit of a clean freak, but not so organised. I have always balked at the thought of getting myself organised as it is just… so… boring… and there are a million things I would rather do than to go through piles of paper and file things and sort and store and… are you all still awake?

I signed up to do the The Organised Housewife’s 20 Day Cleaning Challenge. I thought it would help me get my windows clean and sort some of my stuff out. Little did I know that it would change my house from a slightly deshevelled house of love and fun into a clean, tidy and organised house of love and fun.

This meant that I had to tackle some cupboards. Oi, I have been putting this off for years. YEARS. Not a cool prospect.

When I cleaned the loungeroom, I had to face the fact that I could not take up a cupboard in our buffet with my blogging notebooks and sketchbooks and paperwork anymore, that space was needed for vases and jugs that were cluttering up my dressing table. So, I had to think about how to find a way to store these things in a functional, practical and inexpensive way.

I thought of getting some cute tea-chests, but then I would still have everything chucked in one space and I would still find myself rummaging around for stuff. So, I priced a filing cabinet – but those babies are expensive! I was in no position to spend over $100 on this.

On a brief visit to my favourite St Vinnies, I saw a group of filing cabinets. They were all priced at $20. I thought that they looked retro and industrial and kinda cool – which is just my style. So, I bought one.

It took a lot of cleaning to get it all clean enough to be brought into my house. When I bought it, I didn’t realise how much sticky tape was all over it – that took ages to get it all off. Then I took each draw out and cleaned the inside of each and inside the actual cabinet as well. I don’t know what they had used to write the letters on each draw, but even the strongest paint stripper wouldn’t get it off.

I am pretty happy with it. I didn’t want something terribly pretty… The dream is that one day I will paint it. So, at this stage it just needed to be clean.

I quickly moved my things in. The top draw is for blogging things like notebooks and letters and idea-books. The second draw holds all my drawing things: scrap books, pens, pencils, rulers and lots and lots of sketch books. The bottom drawer holds my craft things. These things were in a basket in the lounge room, but with a little boy constantly getting into the wool I needed to store them somewhere else.

The top of the filing cabinet has become a great charging station for my computer. The little reed basket has become a great place to sort and store mail and my diary. And the placemat, looks pretty…

Although I like the retro/industrial look of the cabinet, I wanted something to personalise it a bit. So… I bought some magnets. Check them out!

These magnets are from my Instagram feed. If you have instagram, you can find the link to StickyGram here. I bought two sets of nine. I thought that this was a cute way to personalise the filing cabinet and also a great way to add a bit of colour. I thought I would print out a set every so often so that over time, the filing cabinet is all covered in pictures of our family love. Cool huh?

I am really glad that I have been able to be a bit more organised for a minimum outlay. I like that it is a bit left of field and I love that I am able to personalise it over time.

How do you store your personal project bit and bobs?

{Please do not tell me you have a whole room to yourself and that you have customised cabinets and air-c0nditioning. I may cry.}