I have a confession…I’m not much of a decorator. I can design your outdoor spaces. I can select plants, put them in the ground and nuture them. I can put together great containers. I can build stuff. Paint. Use power tools. Drive a tractor. Raise butterflies. But decorate…not so much. I really admire all of the ladies (and guys) who can make a coffee table look like it belongs in a painting or who can craft like crazy. But I couldn’t decorate my way out of a box. I could build that box…but decorate…no.

When I moved into my little bungalow, I realized (before the movers left) that my furniture was too large for the space. I had to juggle things around and finally decided to use some shelves I already had for an entertainment unit instead of, well, my entertainment unit. Now I do like things to look nice so I headed to IKEA to purchase some storage boxes for the CD’s and DVD’s that had been housed in drawers. I found these great little numbers…

It turns out that these boxes can do more than just house your media gear. These boxes can be hiding geniuses. With a little help from my trusty drill, I used them to hide the cords under the shelves.

Here you can see the cluster of unsightly cords under the open shelves.

Not don’t go getting all judgy on me. We were just unpacking the books and, of course, the VERY FIRST THING that has to be set up in any move is the television–the book arrangement and pretty stuff had to wait. The point is that there was a mess of cords under those shelves and no easy way to hide them. So like I said, I got out my drill. What else is a girl to do?

Hole saw attached to my drill.

You could use a box cutter as well, but I chose to make a nice round hole…quickly and painlessly. I simply attached a hole saw to my drill, placed the side of the box down on a scrap of lumber, and sawed through.

Then I tucked all those cords inside the box and put the box on the lower shelf along with several others.

The space under the shelves is nice and neat.

You would never know that inside of one of those boxes is a jumbled up mess of cords. Now that is a beautiful thing!

How do you hide your cords and other little messes?

Happy day!

Julie