12 DIY Drawer Dividers That Will Make Organizing Your Home A Breeze

It's always annoying to rummage through a messy jumble of items when you're trying to find something in a drawer. On the flip side, it's supremely satisfying to know that a drawer's contents are neatly sorted in separate sections that are bordered with well-fitting drawer dividers. Creating a storage system inside each drawer is also one of the easiest ways to make your home more organized.

Fortunately, you don't need to spend lots of money on fancy drawer organization systems when you can easily DIY the dividers using materials that are inexpensive or free. We've curated a collection of simple DIY projects that utilize cardboard, paper, foam board, stiffened felt, and other common materials to create drawer dividers that will help you organize your home. The steps to complete these projects are simple, and you probably have the tools around the house. With a measuring tape, pencil, scissors, craft knife, and glue, you'll be on your way to getting the contents of your drawers under control with attractive and functional DIY drawer dividers. 

You'll smile every time you open your dresser after you've installed these cheerful DIY drawer dividers. Start by measuring the depth of each drawer as well as the length from front to back. Using a craft knife, cut pieces of foam board (like this ultra-strong variety from Walmart) to divide each drawer into 2-4 sections. Wrap each divider in stick-on wallpaper or use contact paper as a decorating hack to give your drawer a bit of charm. Then, line the bottom of the drawer with the same paper for a seamless look. 

If you're on a mission to create a home office you definitely want to work in, organizing any desk drawers is a great start. Small items like paper clips, glue sticks, and chargers get lost in a drawer full of office supplies. But if you make a few of these brightly colored trays, you can customize your office drawers for optimal organization. You'll need craft paper or scrapbook paper, a ruler, scissors, and a pencil. Then, follow the steps in the video to fold the paper into shallow containers that hold small items inside the drawer.

You can make DIY drawer dividers from a cardboard box that you probably have lying around the house. Measure and cut strips of cardboard. Then, cover them with contact paper. Line the bottom of the drawer with the same paper. Before you insert the dividers, attach stick-on cable clips like these from Amazon to the inner sides of the drawer to secure the strips. With the dividers lined up and inserted in the clips, they'll remain stable to keep the contents of the drawer tidy.

If your kitchen doesn't have a genius hidden spice rack installed, you probably store them lying flat in a drawer. But horizontal spice bottles can be difficult to access while you're cooking. For that reason, you'll find expensive, commercially made organizers that keep spice jars on a diagonal angle. Using foam board, you can DIY a similar system for far cheaper. Measure the drawer dimensions as well as the height of your spice jars before cutting the foam board with a craft knife. 

With numerous lipsticks, mascaras, eye shadows, and more, a makeup drawer can quickly become a jumble of tubes, jars, and bottles of beauty products. To organize your beauty room, measure the items in your makeup drawer and design a set of dividers that fit together in a grid system to accommodate those items. Measure and cut pieces of foam board, making notches to fit them together in a grid. For visual appeal, cover the dividers with contact paper in an attractive color or print.

Many people store cooking utensils in shallow drawers in their kitchens. Then, the items slide around inside the drawers, making it difficult to find what you need. You can divide the drawers into sections with tension rods like these ones from Amazon. In a shallow drawer, two rods installed one atop the other will cover the full depth of the drawer. To organize your utensils, install the rods from front to back. Depending on the width of the drawer, you can divide it into two or three sections.

Look no further than those leftover cardboard boxes that you have around the house to DIY a grid system of drawer dividers. This video shows you how to measure and cut strips of cardboard so that they interlock via precise notches that hold the system in place. The resulting cubbies are ideal for organizing jewelry, hair accessories, craft supplies, and other small items that might otherwise get lost in a drawer. 

Bring out your inner artist as you organize the contents of a drawer with this fun and colorful DIY divider. Start with old cardboard boxes, gluing them together to create divided sections for the drawer. Then, get busy cutting out colorful pics from magazines and découpage the bright images onto the cardboard boxes. The result is a vivid display that will make you smile every time you open the drawer. 

Everybody has at least one junk drawer, right? If yours is large, deep, and full of miscellaneous stuff, you can organize it for free using boxes that you'd otherwise send to the recycling center. Round up a collection of used cardboard boxes such as the ones that hold trash bags or floor-mopping pads. Use a craft knife to cut the tops of the boxes down to the ideal height for the depth of your drawer. Then, simply place the boxes inside to create divided sections.

No matter how much you try to organize your dresser drawers, the sock drawer invariably descends into chaos, making it difficult to grab a matching pair when you're getting dressed. You can tame the chaos with an organizer made from an empty cookie box and three strips of cardboard. Cut the box into three sections and staple them together. Measure and cut notches in three strips of cardboard to create a grid. The end result provides individual cubbies for keeping nine pairs of socks neatly sorted. 

Corrugated plastic sheets like these on Amazon make it easy to customize an organization system for any drawer, large or small. The stiff, plastic sheets feature an open-cell interior that produces tiny openings along the edges. With this feature, you can use bobby pins to join sections of the corrugated plastic together. Simply measure and cut strips of the plastic sheets and join them at right angles to divide the space inside a drawer.

Felt is an ideal material for lining a drawer that holds jewelry and accessories. Use stiffened felt that stands up and holds its shape to create a customized grid system of drawer dividers. Measure the drawer and cut a large piece of felt for the bottom. Then, cut strips of the stiff felt to span the drawer from front to back and side to side. Measure and cut notches to fit the strips together in a grid and insert it into the drawer.