Easy-To-Make Charging Stations

By Karen May-Free

These days, almost everybody has gadgets that need to be charged and 12 different cables for all of them! If you don’t have a central place for everything, you can lose things and it can all very easily turn into a really big mess. A good way to corral all your cables is a charging station. It gives you a central place to charge your phones and mp3 players and hides the cables inside something pretty.

Lots of retail home décor places want to charge you big money for impressive looking stations, but you don’t need to spend $40 to $60. (See Pottery Barn’s and Bed, Bath and Beyond’s pages.) It’s a box with holes! You can make that yourself!

First, you need an acceptable box. I was really lucky and found this little jewelry box with a drawer at the Goodwill one afternoon. It’s wood, but you can use plastic, cardboard or wood. Just keep in mind you will need to put holes in it, so it can’t be indestructible.

Once you have the box of your choice (or one that will do), figure out how your gadgets will fit on and in the box. Mark places where the wires need to come out on top and figure out where your wires will come in to the box. I decided to run the cables into the back of my box and have them come out the top. If you’ve got a drawer on your box like I do, you may need to remove at least part of the back of the drawer so that the wires can come out the back of the box and you can still get the drawer closed. The drawer also makes a nifty place to coil up the excess cable so it’s not dangling around behind your furniture getting dusty.

Make the holes with a dremel tool or a drill. Remember that the holes need to be big enough to fit the connectors, plus a wire diameter or two, or you won’t be able to set things up! When your holes are created, try and sand the edges down a little so that they don’t damage the cables. 

If you need to paint your box, do so now, otherwise start running your wires through your holes, plug everything in and see how it fits!

Super easy and now you have a convenient place to keep your stuff charged!

Karen is a blogger and crafter who has lived in Charlottesville for 6 years after transplanting from the Shenandoah Valley. While not working or attending classes at PVCC, she blogs about her life at Precision Indecision and about crafts at CraftyKix.