If you can’t get suitable furniture for free, you can build your own cardboard furniture out of free cardboard boxes from the supermarket. I will show how to build a bed table – and even a bed!
Building a bed table
We need these cardboard boxes, usually used for oranges or apples. Pick them up at any discounter, like Lidl or Penny.
Just go there and look in the fruits section for empty boxes and take them. The staff will be most likely fine with that, in the end you’re saving them work because otherwise they would need to shred them. If you don’t find any or not enough ones, you may even ask them when there’s a better time to come again.
Now, the great thing about these boxes is:
- they are standardized, width exactly 60x40cm width and height,
- they are really stable (because remember: they carry oranges and apples, stapled on each other in a truck).
And because they are standardized, we can easily put them together, like Lego:
(Notice how the flaps on the side connect.)
To be able to use them also as storage, we cut off a bit from the walls using a utility knife:
OK, now you might say: I see that this is useful – but it’s ugly as hell. And I agree. So we raise the aesthetic value by putting a bed sheet around:
To fix it, we only need a pushpin on the back side …
… so that from the front, we can still “open” it:
Building a bed
From these boxes, you can also build a bed! You just need a lot more of them, around 20 for a 200x120cm bed. Just arrange them in a row (more boxes on the other side):
Cut also some blowholes into the upper surface to prevent humidity and fungi collecting under your mattress.
And have lots of storange room in the boxes, easily accessible by pulling them out. (The bed will still be held up by the other boxes.)
That’s it! And when you move someday and don’t need them anymore, simply put them into the paper waste container – or use them as packing boxes. 🙂
Do you have any better idea on how or what to build from the boxes? Feel free to add a comment!
