Household Info Center

In our new rental house we have so much space, it is unbelievable!  We actually had a whole empty wall in our Country Breakfast Room.  So I wondered, what to do with it?!?!?!  The wall is between the front door and the garage entry door adjoining the kitchen, therefore i decided to use this wall for all things important in our household.  I've always wanted a mail sorter with key hooks on the bottom, so I set out in pursuit of one and came home empty handed, waa-waa.  Therefore I changed tactics.

I had a very old bulletin board from my childhood (which in my teen years I had attempted to crackle finish with pink and white paint, it turned out more streaky than crackle).  With a new coat of paint on the frame I figured this would work great.

**On a side note, doesn't it look like I spray painted a rectangle on a bunch of newspaper?  Hehehe

Ahhh, so much better already!  The clipboard on the right which has taken the mail sorter's previous spot houses our meal planner, but you'll have to wait for a future post for that one!

Then to my delight I came across this beauty at Marshall's, while not having a mail sorter attached I LOVED the shelf and brackets, and it had my key hooks, sold!

They look great together now that they are the same color!

Now I had a choice: purchase a mail sorter, I LOVE Martha Stewart's here, or I could make one.  As budget was running low, I went for make one.  Ben volunteered to construct it for me, using a cereal box.  First we disassembled the box to make one flat piece.  The center of the box will be the bottom of the mail sorter.

We decided that for the height of back of the mail sorter we would trim the box 2 3/4" and then fold the top over by 1/2".

 We wanted the top to have a larger opening, so Ben positioned it with his fingers till he found the right spot. We filled in the gap with and additional piece of cardboard.

Here is my wonderful man gluing it all together.  We chose to use tacky glue for this project.

Here is the rough shape.

Ben glued construction paper along all of the seams to make sure they would not come undone and to give the top a nice clean edge.

 You can tell that Oatmeal Squares is a favorite in our house, we have lots of boxes of this!

Then it was up to me to cover it with pretty paper.  I used some card-stock weight scrapbook paper I had already.  I folded it around the mail sorter, and then creased it with my bone folder. Then glued, glued, glued!

The paper is trimmed and glued in place.

Next I adhered one of my Martha Stewart chalk board labels that was left over from my labeled baking canisters project here.  I mounted it to the bulletin board using thumb tacks.

After living with the mail sorter on the key hook board, I decided I didn't like it's placement.  Also the board was too thin and the tacks kept coming out.  Therefore I moved it to a more logical placement on the other bulletin board, closer to the mail slot that is under the window on the left.  The new spot works much better for us.

Having a household information wall has been very convenient for us.  We love being able to glance at the information we need as we're trotting out the door.  Have you created such a system?  Tell us about it!