With Spring creeping upon us, it is time to begin our annual organizing fiasco! I challenge you all not to throw away but reuse, re-purpose and recycle while you organize!

I stumbled upon this amazing idea, but realized I was lacking in old, antique looking literature. I had heard of this awesome antique store, Tables to Teacups, decided this was the perfect time to investigate. It was a great success! Grandma’s house is always a good place to begin these projects as well.

The How To: You’ll need a drill, L-brackets, ruler, and screws. You will use 3 L-brackets per ‘book shelf.’ One bracket will need to be slightly smaller than the other two brackets. One set of brackets will be placed below the books, and the other (smaller) bracket will go on top of the book(s). Measure your books and start drilling (two sets of hands makes this much more manageable)! I also used a level at this point for my perfectionist side. Lastly, the smaller bracket is placed on the inside, bottom of the second (top) book – this pressed the books together enough so they didn’t move around.

This makes a pretty solid shelf but ultimately, you won’t want to place anything heavy on these. I must say it felt wonderful when my friends made notice of the new addition to my house and they loved it.

I did this differently than the folks from which I found the idea: Thanks Kristin for a fun and easy project!

This post and project were created by our Intern, Amber Lesser. Amber is an Environmental Studies student at the University of Colorado. Thanks Amber!