My latest Walmart list was very eclectic, so I knew it would take a lot of time to fill. I decided to wait until I had both the time in an afternoon to go and wander and the need to get out of the rig. This afternoon was the day; the pantry was very bare!

I spent over an hour wandering the aisles trying to figure out where things might be. Hardware? Toys? Electronics? Cleaning Supplies? I found all but two things, a little cabinet for the office and matches, which were not in the camping supplies. So I’m stumped and wonder if Walmart carries any. I don’t mean the flimsy cardboard kind smokers use, but sturdy wooden ones for lighting fires.

One thing I did find surprised me, a three-drawer cabinet that was almost exactly the right size to put in an overhead cabinet in the study to hold paper supplies:

I wish it was just a little wider to hold the legal sized file folders, but this was a nice find, and was just $12.

I decided to head to ACE Hardware to see if they might have a hardware cabinet for my office. Office desktop drawers are not the right dimensions for what I had in mind and crazy pricy, hence my thought to look at a hardware store. I’ve been storing my supplies like pens, Post-It notes, and highlighters in my desk drawers, which is a really poor use of space. I never know what I have, so I tend to overbuy.

I had a vision of a desktop shallow, long, and low cabinet with tons and tons of drawers exactly the right size for all my supplies.

Kind of like this:

The drawers are about an inch too short for writing implements, but I can store those things diagonally. Everything else fits perfectly. There wasn’t a single thing I wanted to store in it that doesn’t fit and I even have room for things that I didn’t think would fit (like my stapler). I screwed it to the wall. On a less windy day (ha ha ha ha) I am going to remove all the drawers, take the casing outside, and give it a couple of coats of dark brown paint.

(Thank you Mr. ACE Hardware guy who got the dang thing off a very high shelf and provided a variety of office supplies to test the dimensions while making me feel like a valued customer.)

Now, I have room in my desk drawers for my headset, label maker, scanner, and a bunch of other stuff. This little cabinet was $20 very well spent and is a good use of desktop real estate space!

While at ACE, I remembered to have the truck key copied so that I have a spare… but I forgot the matches. Dang!