A built in solution for desk clutter.

A small desk with a lot of opportunities.

Although I actually have a large desk but I decided to disassemble the bulk of it because I was not planning on using it in this room.

Having a small desk is an invitation for limitation and in this case it was hard to put several necessities on my desk without running into the issue of overcrowding it.

However, the resolution to what appeared to be a problem was actually easy to come by because I ended up finding my solution already built into the desk.

A nice opportunity to reuse a tissue box.

The desk has four legs and on the left side as well as on the right side there are reachable rails near the top which connect the legs together.

I had this desk for at least two years and at first when it was fully assemble it was so large that I never thought of the possibility of utilizing the side rails. But limiting the size of my desk helped me actually expand my options.

It took a few tries before I found a tissue box with the right size and nowadays I reuse the same tissue box and I just refill it when needed.

The tissue box had to fit tightly in between the rail and the wood without falling out but it had to be just the right size so it wouldn't be impossible to take it out from the space.

Additionally, I've used the side rails to hold; headphones, a phone charger wire, and a small towel. The rails are magnetic and at one point I had my magnetic mirror on it.

This was an ingenious idea for keeping the clutter off my desk and this side rail solution doesn't interfere with leg room either so everything has worked out comfortably.

Fixing a broken mouse-pad by breaking it even more

Simple. 

I wasn't using a mouse-pad so my desk started to get scratched up.

One day I happened to be cleaning out a closet when I found a mouse-pad but the only problem was that the textured surface was bent so the mouse-pad wouldn't sit flat on the desk. So I broke off the textured surface and was left with the white pad.

As it turns out, the white pad actually works just fine as a mouse-pad. The mouse rolls nice on its smooth surface and although there is a little indent on the right of it, that doesn't affect the rolling of the mouse in any way.

The white color was good enough for me but I flipped the mouse-pad over and because the backside of it did not look as nice I had decided to take a black dry erase marker and color the entire thing to make it look more uniform. However, the mouse-pad won't sit still when it is flipped over because the opposite side is to smooth for the desk. But it is likely that the marker will work on the white pad, the dry erase marker has not rubbed off the backside of the mouse-pad.

Magnetic mirror minus messed-up handle

Now that it's magnetic, it's more convenient than the handheld version. 

I found a handheld mirror in a drawer but the handheld part was messed up so I broke it off and was left with the mirror.

First I wanted to tidy up the edge of the mirror so I hot glued some ribbon onto it. Then I found a thick magnet and hot glued it to the back of the mirror. It makes a nice addition to my magnet board.

Once a container now a color-coordinated gift

A small gift of color-coordinated erasers and stickers.

At a classroom in junior high I struggled to learn Spanish. During my free time in high school I wasn't quite picking up on the Japanese language that I took interest in. These days it's about learning Arabic and though I've made more progress on it than Spanish and Japanese, I'm still a beginner.

I have a friend who has a little sister around ten years old, she is also learning Arabic. When I had a small Arabic discussion with her, she had one answer while I had another so I told her I'd go back to the books and look up the correct answer. Turns out she was right so to that she first deserves a "baraak Allaahu feek"!

It's good to give gifts if someone helps you. Gift-giving can even be a random act of kindness. This kid deserved a gift and the positive reinforcement happened to be color-coordinated and upcycled.

It can be a plastic lotion container or whatever else similar that you can find.

The gift I had made her included; pink, light blue, and dark blue erasers as well as a few pink stickers (which matched the erasers) and the stickers could be used by the child to customize the container.

I chose erasers for this gift because unlike an ordinary toy, erasers are something that are practical and functional- every student can find a use for them. But it's not a boring gift because the element of fun comes in with decorating the container and the color-coordination is also enjoyable.

A little lesson from the erasers is that we all make mistakes, there is some nice optimism in erasers because when you realize your mistake, you know that there is hope for success because correction can come and mistakes can be erased.

I made the extras because I loved the idea.

The Coaster Lid

When you saved that plastic lid from a can of nuts.

Drinking the recommended daily amount of water is healthy for you but when a water trail is left on your desk- *ponder*...

So I ran into this problem and at first I was going to buy a coaster but then I realized that; I'm environmentally friendly, I could save money, and that this was an opportunity to upcycle!

A few months back I saved a lid from a can of nuts because I wanted to upcycle it but at the time I wasn't sure how I would reuse it. After seeing the trails of water on my desk, everything just clicked.

The lid makes a perfect coaster and if you think something might try to fly into your cup of water then this lovely upcycled coaster becomes a lid (again).



These types of lids come on more than just cans of nuts and they also come in a variety of colors.

A simple, pleasing, and great blessing this is. Actually it's much more than three blessings in one; there's enjoying the nuts (or whatever snack you have), then finding it to be a desk saving solution and another yet again it is another solution if there is an insect flying near your cup of water.

All praise and thanks to the Creator of all that exists for granting mankind this wonderful provision!