Homemade Hide-the-Powercords Box

I couldn't find my digital camera the other day - looked everywhere. Finally, when I did find it, the battery was dead. I decided right there to put together something that would keep all my electronics together and powered. I did some digging on the Internet and found some at the store for $50+ but I'd much rather make something. It's going in my home office so I'm not out to impress anyone.

I didn't feel like taking the time to cut out wood, so I went to The Container Store and found a set of rigid black foam containers for jewelry ($19.00). Each package had 1 long box, 1 medium box, and 1 small box. I bought two. I already had the power strip and velcro.

Only other thing I used was Exacto knives and glue gun.

Save the bottom of the cut bin - it may come in handy. I used it to glue to the front of my box (just along the lower 1-2" of the bottom) for appearances - it covered the hot glue that came out through the gaps.

Put velcro on bottom of power strip. Experiment with placing strip in different locations. I wish I had now put it closer to the back edge.

Hotglue the cut out large bin to the base bin. Be sure to cut a hole in the base bin to allow the power strip powercord to go through.

The medium and small bins can be arranged in different ways - this is Option 1.

Option 2 for possible locations of the small and medium bins.

Option 3 for bin placements.

I went with Option 2. Next, you need to glue the chosen bins together. I hotglued 1 small and 1 medium bin together along the edges you see below.

Cut holes for some of the electronic devices' power cords. It's hard to see, but I also made a small slit moving away from the cut away portion - I can insert thin cables into that slit and they'll hold and won't fall down into the base bin.

I applied small pieces of Velcro around the bottom edges of the 3rd bin layer. This will hold it in place but not too tightly.

Here you can see the 3rd bin layer in place. Notice also the hotglue coming out between the 1st and 2nd bin layers. That will be covered later.

Finally, I add a small bin to the top right. A hole was also cut into this directly above the hole in the 3rd bin layer.

Also, I've cleaned up and squared the bottom I cut out from the large bin in step 1. I glued this across the front to just give it a finished look (glue only applied along bottom 1-2" edge so it doesn't hold the 3rd and 4th layer bins - they're easy to remove).

The only item not powering up is my digital camera that I needed to take this picture. It fits perfectly when the iPod is stood up. Cell and Bluetooth earpiece in top bin... the VidCam will only fit at that angle in the lower bin, but it's held fairly sturdy. The entire box will be put on a lower shelf underneath my desk so there'll be no worries about it dropping or tumbling anything fragile.