Cook Book Organization

I have a ton of cookbooks of all shapes and sizes that live on a rolling cart in my kitchen.  At one point they were neatly piled, but with two toddlers running around the house, they had become just a messy pile and with ripped out pages.  I didn't want to pack them away into the attic, so I decided to use a diaper box (technically, I guess that one is a wipes box) to organize them.  I wanted to cover the box, and had a number of maps downstairs in my craft room to choose from.  My map of the Netherlands was exactly the right size!

First I cut off the top flaps.  I thought about gluing the paper to the box, but discovered that we were almost out of glue, so I went with the next best thing--double sided tape and packing tape!

I drew a 4 inch line coming out from each corner, then cut out the corner squares up to my line, then slit along the line to the edge of the box.  Then I taped on one side at a time.  For the first side I could wrap the map around the edges.  For the other sides I folded the map so that it ended flush with the edge.

I reinforced the top edge and all the corners with clear packing tape.  I also cut out the paper by the handles so I could easily pick up the box.

Here is the (almost) final product!  (the handles are still covered)

The box fits on the bottom shelf of my rolling cart, and all of the small and medium size cookbooks fit into it perfectly!  I have made neater piles of my large cookbooks and binders, so it looks neater.  Now I just need to figure out something for on top to organize our craft and homeschool supplies.