Plastic Drawer Makeover for the Classroom

I don’t know about you, but I never seem to have enough storage in my classroom for all the therapy odds and ends I seem to make and/or collect! I have a hard time keeping all my cards and TpT items together, and decided to find a better way to organize them.

I started with four sets of these white plastic drawers.

Sure, these drawers are perfectly serviceable as is, but I wanted to have them match the rest of my classroom, while also hiding the contents from my students’ view. Time to break out the spray paint! Pro tip: Use plastic primer spray paint before painting with a color. This makes the finished result much nicer and less cheap plastic-y looking.

While the main color in my classroom is green, I decided to go with an accent color of aqua. This color just makes me happy! (And I bought too much, so I have a whole can left over… Oh, the possibilities!)

Here’s what it looks like after paint:

Next, I needed to choose a scrapbook paper for the drawer fronts. While my favorite choice is the green and blue on the far right, I knew that I wanted to label each drawer, and that pattern is too busy to see the label clearly.

I measured one of the drawer fronts, and used a paper cutter to get each piece to the correct size. (Cat assistance optional.)

Originally, I was going to use double sided tape to attach the paper to the drawer fronts. However, apparently we were all out, and I didn’t feel like driving for an hour round trip in the middle of my project to go get some more. Thankfully, I found some clear sticky glue dots in our craft supplies, and decided to give those a try.

The glue dots ended up working well!

Next, I made some labels on my computer for each drawer. I could have written them on with a permanent marker, but I can never line up my handwriting quite right, and it never looks very good. Plus, the labels will come off (with a bit of persuasion) if I need to change them.