For years, I saved a 2-by-three foot cork bulletin board over my table. I saved all varieties of odds and ends on it, some for reference and a few only for ornament. It had notes about the time desk for the general public library, beneficial net websites and phone numbers, caricature clippings, fortune-cookie slips, fun pictures, a listing of movies I wanted to watch, commands for what to do if the Internet goes out, and a replica of the ecofrugal word cloud I made four years in the past.
There were 4 objects particularly on the bulletin board that I used and updated regularly:
- An ongoing list of all our expenses for the month, which I use for budgeting and general reference
- An envelope stuffed with credit card slips, which I save to check against my monthly statement before paying it
- My to-do list, which changes daily
- A list of article ideas for this blog
Since these four items were regularly pulled off the bulletin board to be amended, I kept them secured with easy-to-remove pushpins rather than thumbtacks, which need to be pried up with a fingernail. Repeatedly pulling out and replacing these pins gradually wore away the cork near the bottom of the board, but we just flipped the board over to expose a fresh area of cork for pinning, which we figured would hold up for another year or so.Why then, you could ask, am I concerning this bulletin board within the past annoying?
To which I respond: cats.
Our new cats are adorable, mild, and playful, however they may be additionally little troublemakers. They get into virtually the whole lot that isn't always nailed down. I've already needed to update the flower vase on our kitchen desk with a cat-proof version, and we have got additionally had to dispose of or rearrange various decorations to either maintain them out of the cats' gain or lead them to less attractive. And more than one weeks ago, the cats?Especially Winnie?Commenced putting their sights on my bulletin board. I assume it changed into the brilliant pushpins that caught her eye, due to the fact she stored hopping up on my table and batting at them. I needed to remove her numerous instances, but I could not keep an eye on her each minute, and she or he eventually controlled to knock one of the pins loose.
Since I didn't want sharp pointy items rolling around unfastened in which both we or the cats may additionally step on them, I determined to try changing them with thumbtacks, in spite of the reality that they have been plenty less reachable. Unfortunately, through this time Winnie had grow to be passionate about the gadgets on the bulletin board, and in preference to mess with the thumbtacks, she actually grabbed the paper itself at the side of her enamel and pulled it loose?Sending the thumbtack flying inside the gadget.
At this point, I came to the notion that there was no way to make the bulletin board cat-evidence, and I would possibly must replace it with some component else. Brian suggested a magnet-board, for the purpose that cats probably wouldn't be robust sufficient to dislodge a fairly robust magnet?And even supposing they controlled it, a unfastened magnet might now not be almost as masses of a risk to our ft as a free pushpin. He'd seen some thing along the ones lines for round $10 at IKEA, but given that our nearest IKEA is ready 35 mins away and costs $5 in tolls, we decided to strive Staples as a substitute. They had a choice of magnetic dry-erase forums in numerous sizes, however they had been quite costly; to get one the size of my vintage cork board should have rate nearly $50, not counting the magnets.
So Brian's subsequent concept was to save you via a home middle and pick up a piece of easy sheet metallic. He figured we might also need to construct a body for it out of easy wooden molding, bolt the entire meeting to the wall so the cats couldn't pull it down, and function ourselves a DIY magnet-board for an lousy lot less than it might fee to shop for one. Unfortunately, this plan failed to education session both. Home Depot, to our surprise, did not absolutely have any sheet metal; Lowe's did, however it wasn't well labeled, so it took us some time to parent out the fees. Eventually we deduced that a 2-through-3 piece of skinny sheet metallic should fee spherical $30. Once you tacked on the cost of the timber molding and the magnets, it wouldn't definitely be that a great deal cheaper than the Staples model, and it'd take loads greater work.
At this factor, making the ride to IKEA have become starting to seem like a greater low-cost option. So we headed home, in which Brian, seized via a sudden notion, dove down into the shop and began rummaging through the piles of scrap material. There he unearthed a flat metallic object, about sixteen inches by means of the usage of 20, bearing the label
Brian located the wall studs, drilled a couple of holes, and bolted the mat securely to the wall. I then raided our stash of magnets and found enough to secure the most essential pieces from my old bulletin board to the new magnetic board. This new board is still mildly interesting to the cats, but not nearly as fascinating as the old cork board, and so far, they have had no success at all pulling anything off it.
This improvised magnetic board isn't nearly as large as my old cork board, so it doesn't have room to store all the items I used to keep on it. Some of the less useful items, and all of the decorative ones, have had to be stashed away. But since these aren't items that need to be taken down and put back up regularly, Brian has promised to find a way to fit them all into frames and hang them up next to the magnet board—which will also fill the awkward gap on the wall between this smaller board and my wall-mounted ukulele hanger.
Then all we'll have to do is figure out some way to keep the cats from sitting directly in front of my computer monitor while I'm trying to work, and we'll be all set.
