I don’t know about you, but I fight a constant battle over the contents of my fridge. Not the interior contents; I’ve pretty much given up that battle. I’m talking about the landslide of papers, photos, coupons, and reminders that litter the front of the fridge.
I keep looking at cute message board crafts online and thinking if I just had the right board I could revolutionize our “system” (my euphemism for our mess), but deep down I know that I will never be able to switch to a different way of keeping track of our lives. I’m a visual person, and if it’s not right in front of me, it doesn’t exist in my world. (Like the doctor’s appointment and school deadline that mysteriously slipped by me this week!) So if it’s something that needs to be dealt with, looked at, or remembered in any way, it gets plopped on the fridge. And now that I have two little creative people in my life, they make their own contributions to the chaos (in more ways than just the fridge, believe me!).
So, bearing my own weaknesses in mind, and also my semi-compulsive need to live in an organized space, I set out to improve the situation in a way that will still work for me. What I came up with is a fun and easy little magnet craft that anyone can do to spiff up their own fridge.
All you need is a packet of Photo Corners, found in the scrapbooking aisle of any craft store, and a few self-adhesive magnetic strips. (I found these at Walmart.) Here is the easy part:
- Separate one of the magnetic strips from the sheet.
- Measure (I just eyeballed it) the photo corners against the strip, to see how big to cut your pieces.
- Cut the strip in triangles. One diagonal cut, followed by a straight cut, and so on.
- Remove the adhesive backing and stick the magnet to the back of a photo corner.
- Repeat till you have enough corners to put 2-4 on each picture/ paper/ coupon. (Smaller pieces only need two corners, but anything larger than a 4×6 photo probably needs four.
Now the hard part: arranging all your stuff! I made mine into a loose collage so that I can move and add stuff whenever I need to. Indeed, in the two days since I started this project, I’ve already changed out four pieces. Life moves fast!
My fridge is one of the first things I see when I come into the house, so now instead of accosting me with a huge messy to-do list, it welcomes me with a less chaotic, and prettier, collage of our life. It may be a small thing, but every little bit helps, when you’re trying to hang on to your sanity!
The great thing about these magnetic photo corners is that they just slip on and off your photos, so they’re a great alternative to pushpins, if you have a metal surface to use them on. They’re so quick, easy, and inexpensive to make, and would make a cute little housewarming or hostess gift, if you put a bunch in a dressed up mason jar.
Happy organizing! I’d love to hear from you if this sparks an idea…
P-Ann :)
Sunday 11th of May 2014
I have your exact same frig!! That makes me smile! :) So I'm still a little confused - Are the little corner pieces just tiny magnets or are they stuck to the pictures & you are constantly making new ones as you throw old pictures/notes away?
Meredith
Monday 12th of May 2014
Yay! Is yours as messy as mine? :) The corner pieces are paper photo corners glued to little magnets.Photo corners are how photos used to be attached to photo albums. They're little paper pieces that slip off and on the photos without actually attaching to them. So they're easy to change out whenever you need to, sort of like pulling a photo out of a frame. Once you have enough for all the photos you need at any one time, you never need to make more. You can usually find photo corners in the scrapbook aisle. Let me know if you can't find them and I'll figure out where you can order them.
Christina
Saturday 3rd of May 2014
I was working with photo corners this week while framing my photos for a showcase at a local coffee shop. Such a genius idea to add magnetic strips for the fridge!
I was wondering if you could come up with and idea for using old video tapes as a "frame" or creative way to display photos.
Meredith
Tuesday 6th of May 2014
Christina, that's a great idea, let me put some thought into it. Are you talking about the tapes themselves, like VHS? And are you thinking they'd hang on a wall, or sit on a table?
Susanna
Saturday 3rd of May 2014
Wow! How simple yet so effective! I'm going to get some photo corners and magnetic strips this week - definitely - and organise my messy, messy firdge
Meredith
Tuesday 6th of May 2014
Thanks, and good luck! :)
Anna Khan
Saturday 3rd of May 2014
This is really a fantastic idea and the fridge look very organised , clean. Just a small thing can change to good. Good thing about photo corners that I came to know that you mentioned is they can be removed and then can be used on another photo again.
Meredith
Tuesday 6th of May 2014
Thanks! Yes, I've already reshuffled most of what's on my fridge again!
crystalzakrison
Friday 2nd of May 2014
Great idea. My refrigerator looks like a disperse of confusion right now. You have reminded me to organize my fridge! =)
Meredith
Tuesday 6th of May 2014
Oops, sorry! Didn't mean to create more work for people. :) But it feels so good when it's done.