Stair Step Basket

If I let it, the bottom of my staircase would like to look like this at all times:

It’s such a slob. I’m always having to pick up after it. I would love to have clean staircase, but my stairs just don’t seem to understand.
(Really, the mess is never my fault. I never just throw things on it while cleaning. I never feel to lazy to carry things upstairs while I’m cleaning. And I never just ignore the pile, figuring I’ll pick things up next time I go upstairs.)

I’ve seen baskets like this one, or this one, but spending $40-70 to help deal with my—I mean the staircase’s—problem just didn’t seem reasonable. There are so many better things to spend my money on. So I decided to take matters into my own hands and make this:

First I measured the depth and height of each step I wanted the basket to fit on (guess what! They each were a slightly different height and depth. No wonder I trip on my stairs all the time). The I used the box Jace’s big boy car seat came in:

I cut open the box and cut out 2 step shaped pieces for the sides, and then smaller pieces to put between those two pieces.

Because of the way I cut the cardboard (in other words, I did it without thinking through it too much), I used Mod Podge to adhere scrapbook paper to the sides with graphics on them that would be visible inside the box. Then I taped it all together, and applied cloth using Mod Podge to the outside.

I did mis-tape, or forgot to put scrapbook paper on it, or something (or it was late, and I just wanted to finish it and didn’t care to fix it) on two of the pieces. But I figured the likelihood of the box ever being empty was low enough that I just didn’t need to worry about it.

And here you have it, the final product, all full!

Walking down the stairs doesn’t seem so scary anymore!

Check out the great parties I’ll be linking up with!