Get organized and save the planet with this super easy DIY desk organizer made with recycled boxes. It’s fun and functional!

If your kid’s desk (or even yours) is a cluttered mess, but you don’t want to spend a ton of money on supplies, fear not.

As a professional organizer, I know lots of people struggle with keeping their desks clutter-free. And having a desk caddy to organize your supplies will keep everything neat and tidy.

But as a frugal mom, I also know desk organizers can be pretty expensive.

I call my organizing business “The Economical Organizer” for a reason!

So, here is a quick and easy tutorial on how to make your own desk organizer using items you already have, just like the one I made for my girls!

The desk organizer I made is for my college daughters’ room. They share a room for part of the year, when the one comes home from college. They have one desk and it can get pretty cluttered with papers, folders, drawing supplies and office supplies. So, it can be a challenge to make enough room on the desk for a laptop and a place to write in their notebook.

Our organizer solves that with places for notebooks, loose papers, composition books and pens and pencils.

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DIY desk organizer supplies:

• Assorted boxes – including cereal and cracker boxes
• Toilet paper or paper towel tubes
• Wrapping paper
• Scotch tape
• Paper fasteners (brads)
• Sharp tool (like an awl or knitting needle)
• Packing tape
• Scissors

Ready to get organized? Get your free guide of 10 fast and easy ways to get organized for under $10 below, created by a professional organizer (me 😊).

DIY desk organizer tutorial

First things first.

Begin collecting cardboard boxes and other items from your recycling bin.

After I gathered up boxes for several weeks, I had quite an assortment to choose from.

I recommend one large (family-size) cereal box. The large boxes are the only ones wide enough to hold notebook and art paper, as well as folders.

The other boxes I used were a smaller cereal box, a brownie mix box, and a 1-lb. pasta box.

I also had 4 toilet paper tubes and I ended up cutting down a paper towel tube to make 2 other tubes the same size as the toilet paper tubes.

How to assemble your desk caddy

The pen and pencil organizer.

The first thing I did was measure the height of the toilet paper tubes and cut down the pasta box to the same size.

The pasta box snugly held 6 tubes. It was just the right size!

Make a paper organizer next.

So it is easier to get your papers out of the cereal box, cut down the sides at an angle (like a magazine file box).

Use a ruler to make a nice straight line on the back and front of the box from the upper corner down to about 6″ from the bottom. (The photo below shows the back of the box)

This cardboard is pretty thin, so to make your box more sturdy, leave the skinny side piece intact.

So you’ll only be cutting a triangle off the front and back.

I know it sounds confusing, but it really isn’t! Here is a diagram on how to do your cuts.

This is what it should look like when you cut the triangles off. You’ll have this weird tall piece sticking up.

Now, just fold that skinny piece down to form a nice thick edge to your box. (I taped mine so it stayed down.)

The big cereal box and the brownie box were good the way they were, so you don’t have to do any cutting of those!

So, here are all my boxes cut down to size.

By the way, are your craft supplies a jumbled mess? Get a FREE copy of my top ways to organize them below. 👇

Wrapping (the Pinterest-worthy part).

Since you will be attaching all of the boxes together, you want to wrap them each individually first.

Mix and match, or keep them all the same. It’s all up to you!

Now, you could use Contact paper (like this pretty floral design) or duct tape (like this fun 6-pack of colors), both of which would be super durable, or even aluminum foil to cover them. But since this is for my daughters’ room and they have nice bright colors, I chose a cheery robin’s egg blue, hot pink, and left-over My Little Pony wrapping paper.

Here are the wrapped boxes.

I must admit, I am a horrible wrapper… I can’t keep my corners nice and taut. Grrr…..

My husband, however, is a master wrapper.

So, I bribed him with brownies (hence the empty brownie mix box :)) and he did all the wrapping for me (except for the silver pencil box. I wrapped that one because the paper is very strong and I could pull it nice and tight)!

Here he is, working his wrapping magic…

How to fasten your desk organizer together.

Once all the boxes are wrapped, it’s time to stick them all together into one unit.

You can simply tape or glue them to each other, but I was afraid that would rip the wrapping paper.

So, here is what I did instead to keep them securely attached.

Use an awl and paper fasteners to secure the boxes to one another.

Poke a small hole through the boxes with a sharp point like an awl or knitting needle or even a nail or screw.

Then attach the boxes together using a paper fastener brad. (The kind that pokes through and then you bend the 2 arms apart to hold it securely.)

I used 6 brads to hold my organizer together.

Here is where I placed them.

Then, for extra security, flip the organizer on its side and use a few pieces of packing tape on the bottom to hold everything together.

(And see how neat my hubby’s wrapping job is – even on the bottom!)

Now fill up your DIY desk caddy with all your supplies!

Store notebooks in the big compartment. Smaller composition books or coloring books and loose papers fit neatly in the middle box. The side box is great for rulers, a calculator, craft tools, and other things. And get those pens, colored pencils, glue sticks, and other smaller items organized in the toilet paper tubes.

Note: The girls’ glue stick and small scissors were too short for the toilet paper tube, so I wadded up a left-over piece of wrapping paper and put it in the bottom of the tube to give it a bit of height. Now the glue stick is easier to reach.

Here’s the finished caddy sitting right next to the girls’ desk. Their desktop is now decluttered and clean! They can actually put both their laptop and a notebook on their desk now for when they are doing homework. And now, all their supplies are right within reach. Woot!

This customized DIY desk organizer is super easy (and fun) to make, and you can choose any colors you want. With recycled boxes and items you already have, it’s also very affordable! Score!

Looking for other ways to recycle your cardboard boxes?

Check out my post: Awesome ways to recycle cereal boxes

And for ways of recycling other items into beautiful and fun crafts, check out this post: Easy ways to recycle trash into treasure

Enjoy your new DIY desk organizer. Leave me a comment and tell me how you plan to use yours!

Happy organizing!