Craigslist FAIL - DIY Recovery

Once upon a time we needed a filing cabinet so I set out on Craigslist to find something that would work. You see, we're cheap frugal so there was no way we were going to buy something new.

Mr. I'm-Glad-There's-No-Lemon-Law-For-File-Cabinets sold us a huge filing cabinet for $25. Call me trusting, call me naive, I thought that perhaps he just had a spare in his home office and was looking to be kind and generous by selling us this huge filing cabinet for cheap.

File Cabinet 1


He wasn't, it had one wonky drawer that broke pretty soon after we got it home. I'm sure it was only wonky when it was empty, it was likely fully broken when he had files in it too.

So we've been limping along with this filing cabinet but thankfully it was more space than we needed so we just avoided the crappy drawers.

UNTIL

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That drawer was barely hanging on and was sagging so far, it was keeping other drawers from opening.

This morning at about 9:30, I stood up from my coffee and said, "I'll be right back, I'm going to go fix the filing cabinet drawer."

It wasn't fixable (we'd been fighting with it since we got it last August) so I pulled it out. Then it hit me . . . I could pull out the top two drawers (both of which were misbehaving by now) and add a wood shelf in just above the 2 working shelves then move some of my craft stuff out of the soon-to-be-nursery (currently my craft room) into the space.

Or did I? Nope, I removed the front of one of the discarded drawers, laid it in as a shelf and within minutes, had my drawers loaded in.

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HOLY RABBIT HOLE BATMAN!!! Once that was done, I ended up reorganizing the space above the cabinet, my office supply drawers, pens/markers/pencils, most of my junk drawers (yes, there were several), my containers of cords and adapters and, well, the entire laundry area which is across from this cabinet. Then suddenly it was 6pm. PHEW!!

Here's the area above the cabinet (this is out in the garage so this is a tall tower):

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And because I love my label maker, I also made sure things were easy to find:

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It felt so great to be so productive. I feel like I sorta made up for the unproductive past week of taking care of my sick little boy. I'm also pretty excited that I made it through the day without a nap . . . I haven't done that in about 3 months. Perhaps there's an end to this pregnancy exhaustion in my near future?? I sure hope so.

Thank you for reading,
Julie
Other posts you might be interested in:
Craft Room Overhaul
Craft Closet Cleanout
Office/Nursery (client project)
Freecycle Storm Door

2 comments:

  1. Julie....I can only add one comment to your posting...in response to Mr. Glad-There-Is-No-Lemon-Law-For-File-Cabinets....having your heard the saying when life gives you lemons....make lemonade? In your case, when life gave you a lemon of a file cabinet, you came up with something even better!! That is a GREAT idea!!  
    Deb from cluttereddquilter.blogspot.com

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  2. Thank you, in the end, I'm actually glad it turned out the way it did. If the filing cabinet hadn't fallen apart on me, I'm not sure where I would have put these plastic drawers - I definitely wouldn't have been forced to just remove the drawers. It was an easy transformation and I'm thrilled with the way it turned out. I actually find that those drawers are more accessible than they were at the bottom of the craft closet (now cloffice) where the lighting wasn't ideal for searching in drawers of tiny objects. 

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