Easy DIY Rolling Toy or Book Crate {Toy Storage Idea}

Books have been an ongoing struggle in our house.  My little girl loves books and loves to read and as a result we have mountains and mountains of them.

I have tried so many different ways to organize the books- we have book shelves in the playroom, tubs for books and so on.  She loves to have them in her room though and what usually happens is that books wind up piled high in a big mess on her nightstand or her floor.

So I really wanted to come up with a solution that would not discourage her in any way, yet made it a little easier to take care of our books and put them away when we are done reading.

So initially I bought a plain unfinished wood crate from the craft store for about $6 (with a coupon).  These are pretty sturdy and you can paint them in any wood stain or color that you like.

I painted our crate yellow which is her favorite color.  I think bright red would look fantastic too or a dark wood stain would be gorgeous.

Next I wanted to dress it up a bit so I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out a cute little vinyl label for the crate.  It reads “So Many Books So Little Time.”

If you don’t have a Silhouette you can always paint on a child’s name, something to identify what belongs in the crate, a number, pictures of butterflies or baseballs etc…

Once it was done we put it inside her closet and called it a day.  But then we discovered she was trying to drag the crate back and forth across the room 🙂 . So fearing for our carpet, I stopped off at Home Depot and picked up four swivel wheels.  They have some that only go in one direction for about $.99 but I got wheels that were slightly larger and that roll all around- they were roughly $3 each.

The only little tricky extra thing I did (ok I didn’t my husband did) was to just take an extra piece of scrap wood and nail it to each end of the crate (at the bottom).  Since I chose a larger, sturdier wheel the screws were too big for the wood on the bottom of the crate and they would have poked through.  The extra little piece of scrap wood made the crate a little sturdier.

So easy peasy and this has worked out really well!  It tucks right into the closet and my daughter loves rolling her little crate all around her room.

This would be so handy for all sorts of things!  I am thinking of making one of these for my office to hold files and binders and such that I refer to frequently.  So nice to have it all in one spot and no heavy lifting or scratching up the floors.

Here it is tucked away in the closet– ta da!

The total cost of this project was about $20- $12 for the wheels and about $6 for the crate.  I used a sample of paint that I already hand on hand.

And if you have little ones you might also check out this super easy DIY Glitter letter that is fun for playrooms or bredrooms.