The Little Cabinet That Could

I have a little spot in my little apartment, between the kitchen and the dining room, that could easily fit a little shelf-type thing. And YOU KNOW I need to get as much storage space as possible out of this place. 

I think I was whining about that spot for a good 5 hours when my very, very sweet friend, Ali (who also happens to be my sister-in-law), gave in and generously gave me a piece of furniture from her very own furniture supply store that she calls her garage. 

Ali's awesome that way. 

It's a really cute piece, but it's open in the front. What I need is practical storage space, not Look-How-Fancy-I-Can-Display-My-Fancy-Stuff space. Besides, I don't have any fancy stuff.

See? Not fancy at all. 

(As a disclaimer, at this point I was still unloading the boxes into my apartment. I wasn't yet into the decorating/organizing phase of the big move.)

Ali's awesome in another way, too. She has the much larger version of this cabinet. She covered the front opening with fabric so she could use it to store all of her crafting supplies. I knew my little cabinet needed the same treatment. 

The mess inside that cabinet was driving me nuts. I had some extra fabric that used to be my basement window curtains (how I miss that basement!) and an extra 30 minutes on my hands, so I got down to business.

Supplies:

Cabinet

Fabric

Ribbon

Scissors 

Iron

Glue Gun and Glue

Cut the fabric to fit the height of the cabinet door opening. Cut 2 pieces of ribbon to fit the width of the door opening. You want the fabric width match the length of the ribbon (the width of the door opening). You can cut the fabric to fit the door opening or you can make some folds in the fabric and iron them so they stay. I'm sure you could get all measury and perfecty on the folds if you wanted. I just folded where I thought the folds should go. This is the back side of my fabric:

Hot glue the front of the fabric along the door frame opening. I put my cabinet on its side to make it easier to glue.




Make sure you pull the length of the fabric really tight before you glue. Otherwise, if you are like me, when you stand the cabinet back up, the extra fabric will pull at the bottom and you'll have to pull it off and start gluing again. Depending on the heaviness of your fabric, you may want to hot glue in the folds as well. Then your folds will stay perfect forever and ever.

Hot glue the pieces of ribbon to the top and bottom of the fabric. This is just cosmetic. If you wanted to get really fancy, you could glue 2 more pieces to cover up the sides of the fabric. I ran out of brown ribbon, so I didn't.

Close it up. Admire the outer beauty.

Open it up. Fill it with stuff.

Admire the inner, organizational, functional beauty.

It's The Little Cabinet That Could (Hold Lots of Not-Fancy Stuff)!