Repurposing Makes the Heart Go Pitty Pat

 Sometimes, doing the simplest little repair can make you feel really good. That was the case with this project if it could even be called a project.

Recently, I moved Rugrat's books. She has one of those six wire cube type shelf things in her room. We use several fabric bins to contain her toys and such. But one cube has always been reserved for her puzzles and one for her books.

As she is getting older, though, several of her toys are a little larger and so we dedicated a cube to some larger things. That meant finding a new place for either her books or puzzles.

I had been wanting to move her books to her dresser anyway so this gave me a good excuse. I was readying myself to go on a search for something to hold them when I remembered these wooden bookends we had.

Which I think are pretty cute (it doesn't hurt that I bought them for $3 at a thrift store when I got them either).

After a couple of days of using them though, I saw why they weren't already in use for anything significant. They slid under the weight of the books.

Which meant that everything on her dresser that they slid into went off the edge.

It doesn't help much to organize things if they end up on a pile on her floor.

I kept trying to think of a way to fix it. I was considering hot gluing some of the stuff you lay under rugs so they won't slide around on the bottoms when it occurred to me that connecting them under the books in some way would work just fine.

I remembered some wooden 'shims' we had found in the garage but I had not realized they were larger on one end than the other. That wouldn't work.

That's when I spied a red wooden ruler that nobody was using. The thickness of the ruler wouldn't interfere with the stability of the bookends because they had little pads on the bottom that were about the same thickness. Eureka!

I nailed it on to each bookend and painted it white to match them.

She doesn't have enough books to look like they aren't attached and it isn't adjustable, but seeing it makes me very happy.

Especially when this organizing fix was completed with things we already had on hand.

Repurposed bookends - $0 (or $3 if you want to be persnickety)
Repurposed ruler - $0 (and it was a freebie thank you very much)
4 little nails - $0 (purchased in a package for another project from a long time ago)
White craft paint - $0 (already on hand from other projects)

That good feeling of making things better without spending a penny out of your pocket -- PRICELESS!