Building bookshelves out of cardboard boxes

We moved into our new apartment in West Ridge, Chicago, about two weeks ago now. Although doing a pretty solid job unpacking (not having a job certainly helps that move along quicker), there are still plenty of things to sort though. Up until yesterday that included my books, records, cds and writings. The main reason for that is that I didn’t have any shelves for them and (again with the unemployment thing here) didn’t want to spend the money for new ones. Enter creativity. While finishing John Dos Passos’ The Big Money I had an idea (why, I cannot say) – why not just build some shelves myself out of all the moving boxes I had? Surely that couldn’t be so hard.

I searched online and immediately came up with many posts about how to do just this thing, but every one I looked at was terrible. Really, terrible. So, I just had at it.

 

And boom. Three and a half hours later, here she is:

Now, I am not a handy-around-the-house kinda guy, so I’m pretty proud of these. They turned out much better than I thought they would and even got my cat Samantha’s seal of approval.

They’re sturdier than I thought – Sam jumped on top and they survived. And the next time we move, if they don’t survive they can simply be recycled. No waste, no extra expense and my books have a home again. All is well.