Keep Sink-Side Essentials Organized With A Chic Dollar Tree Cutting Board Hack

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Sink-side essentials like pump hand soap and lotion, while necessary, can make your bathroom counter space look cluttered and disorganized. Fortunately, smart DIYers know that budget-friendly Dollar Tree hacks to tidy up clutter, like wooden handmade counter trays, are often the best remedy for such a dilemma. And you won't even need a sleight-of-hand trick to make such a thing. Instead, you'll transform an item you normally see in the kitchen — a bamboo cutting board — into just the sink-side tray your essentials need to rest easy between uses. 

This DIY cutting board hack calls for a Dollar Tree Cooking Concepts Bamboo Cutting Board. This creates the base for your sink-side essentials tray. To prevent water from seeping underneath it, you'll mount it on a pair of 8-inch crafting blocks. Attaching the tray's legs to its cutting board base requires a spot of the glue of your choice. If you're not certain which to choose, it's hard to go wrong with a glue gun or some E6000 Multipurpose Adhesive. And while it's not required, you can fancy the DIY up a bit by adding a coat or two of stain.

For such a classy-looking little item, it's awfully easy to assemble. You'll basically glue the 8-inch by 2-inch wooden craft blocks onto the bottom of the 9-inch cutting board. They should be positioned parallel to each other. For projects that are sans stain, that's pretty much it for the assembly. If you do want to stain the piece, it's best to stain each of the separate pieces first and then glue the tray together after the stain dries.

If you don't have any stain leftover from other projects and you don't want to buy a big new can of it, you can try something like Varathane Less Mess Wood Stain and Applicator to finish the piece. Because the stain bottle has an applicator, you don't need to buy any sponge brushes to apply it. Instead, you'll apply it straight out of the container with the help of the applicator nozzle. 

As for how to use the tray, there are plenty of possibilities for keeping countertops free of clutter. Making it a mini shelf for pump soaps and lotions may be many people's go-to use for it. However, it can also be a cute perch for items like perfume bottles, jars of cotton balls and swaps, or even a base for a few candles.

If you want to elevate this affordable, rustic Dollar Tree DIY, you just need to swap out a few items. Instead of going with the long carving blocks as legs, you can use some Crafters Square Wood Craft Cubes from Dollar Tree as legs instead. You'll glue at least one of them in each of the four corners so that the tray stands on wooden block feet instead of two long legs.

Or you can do a variation on the feet theme by MacGyvering a few of the Crafter's Square Wooden Peg Dolls. The peg dolls have flat bottoms. If you put some glue on the bottom of the dolls, you can fasten them to the four corners of the cutting board. The upside-down dolls become legs for the piece. They'll look a bit like the fancy legs of a chair or couch that stands on four feet.

Finally, you can make a place to stash smaller items, like rings, bracelets, or watches, while you wash your hands. To do this, you'll glue one of Dollar Tree's Crafters Square Wooden Decor Boxes to one of the ends of the tray. This becomes a tiny catch-all for items that don't need a permanent home but that could get lost down the sink or damaged by the water while you're working near or washing up in the sink.