What You Make of It: Upcycled Mail Organizer with Eleanor of Oh Louise! Personalized Stationery

One thing that Peter & I have been steadily bad at since getting married is being organized with our mail... the mail comes, one of us looks at it & puts it somewhere random & the other never knows that mail even came! Not good...

So when  my mother-in-law was cleaning her garage out and asked if I wanted an old basket that used to be brown & forest green, the shape instantly made me think it could be a mail-organizer that would fit perfectly on the ledge in our entry hall. And then of course I thought of spray paint & how easily I could jazz the old basket up.

 

Supplies: an old basket, box or container with sections, household cleaner, spray paint, sturdy white paper, computer & printer (or you could hand write your labels!), glue lines or double sided tape

 

First I cleaned the basket using household cleaner & a paper towel.

I then spray painted it with aqua spray paint & let it dry. I gave the basket 2 coats because of the weaving, to make sure I got all the nooks and crannies.

I didn’t even spray a protective coat on this one, but at some point I might if I notice a lot of chipping – that one’s up to you!

Lastly I printed out little tags to further organize us... One for each of us (so that the other knows where to stick the mail when its not theirs!), one tag for mail addressed to us both & one for magazines – we randomly get a lot of those! I attached the tags using acid-free “glue lines” – you can find them in the scrapbooking section at craft stores. They work great – much better than double sided tape!

The point of the mail organizer is not to store mail forever, but just to give it a temporary, happy home when we don’t have time to deal with the mail, but have already taken it out of the mailbox. So far it’s working like a charm... no more lost birthday cards and no more (or far less!) stacks of mail around the house!

Visit our guest contributor Eleanor Boynton at Oh Louise! for her line of personalized Stationery.