apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

what adhesive do you use?

For drawers I just do some doublestick tape in each corner and maybe a piece or 2 along the sides and in the middle. Since it isn't a kitchen cabinet where you're sliding a lot back and forth, it stays pretty resilient, but I do have to be a little careful when scraping the bottom of the drawer!

When I was a kid my mom would line our drawers with old maps and pages from a road atlas. I loved it and still use maps to line my drawers.

maps! what a good idea!

Does anybody have tips for making cutting to size easier? I find the roll of the wrapping paper makes it nearly impossible to cut perfect lines.

I use rolls of wallpaper bought from odd lot bins in high end places. One roll of wallpaper I could never afford to do walls with, will do a whole lot of drawers, with some left over for closet shelves.

I love the idea of using wrapping paper. Doesn't the color rub off on your clothes? Or whatever is in the drawer?

As I understand it, part of the reason for lining wood drawers is to keep the acids in the woods from discoloring your clothes over time. I would think using standard wrapping paper would not only add to the acidic content but also throw some non-permanent ink into the mix. Maybe have some plexi cut to fit your drawers to place over the paper. I do agree it looks nice!

Thanks home body for explaining the purpose of drawer liners. I never understood that before. Does laminate have acidic content?

I just did this two weeks ago with the very same Target gift wrap. So far, it works great and definitely looks better than using regular drawer liners, which usually come in plain white, some hideous pastel pattern or a faux linen weave texture. However, the posts about acidic content/non-permanent ink has got me thinking I should probably put a non-acidic clear layer over it.

Swingjingle--I bought a Fiskars paper cutter, which has greatly improved the quality of my life. http://tiny.cc/j8vGc

Having read all the comments, I'm now considering covering wrapping paper with a roll of sticky back clear plastic.

How to make paper fit the drawer:

(I tried to post this earlier, but had technical problems. I hope I can recreate the description so it's clear!)

Cut your paper a few inches longer than the drawer is wide.

At one end, fold the edge under an inch or two and carefully align the cut edge with itself as exactly as you can, then carefully crease the fold trying to not let the edge alignment slip. This should create a perfectly straight 90 degree fold.

Snug the folded corner into a corner of the drawer, and pinch a crease in the edge of the paper at the opposite corner where the paper needs to fold for a correct fit.

Remove the paper and fold under at that point as before.

(If you are really precise or covering this with Contact Paper, you can trim the excess along the fold lines.)

Then just place in the drawer and if there is excess front to back, just fold it UP along the back edge which helps keep the liner from sliding.

Hope that helps!

I've been pondering this same question as I wanted to line our drawers and closet shelves with a pretty print fabric but of course that would defeat the purpose of protecting linens/clothes just as a pretty paper would... so the plexi idea is sort of a neat one! I wonder how expensive it would be? It does seem like a lot of effort/expense... but the idea of lining drawers with whatever you want is so seductive...