6 Useful DIY Car Trunk Organizers You Can Make Today (With Pictures)

The trunk of the car can become a dumping ground for stuff, and even if you consider yourself a tidy person, it doesn’t take long before jackets, footwear, toys, and other items start to mess the place up. Not only does it make it more difficult to find things when you need them, but if you’ve got walking shoes rattling around with jackets and school blazers, everything is going to get messy and potentially damaged. Open the trunk on a windy day, and you run the risk of half your belongings blowing down the street, too.

There are a lot of different styles and varieties of car trunks. This makes it difficult to buy an organizer that fits perfectly, and while it does mean that you may have to modify a design to perfectly fit your trunk space, it also enables you to customize the design according to the type of items you put in the trunk.

Whether you’re stowing clothes and toys or the weekly grocery shopping, below are six creative trunk organizers that you can make yourself, typically for a lot less than you would pay for a commercially available equivalent.

The 6 Useful DIY Car Trunk Organizers

1. DIY Old Jacket Car Back Seat Organizer by Make Ur Own 1

Most of us have old jackets or other old clothes laying around, sometimes even in the trunk of the car. This plan is for a car back seat organizer made from an old jacket. You do need some basic sewing skills, and the plans are designed for the back of a chair. Some back seats are appropriately sectioned so that you can still use the design as is, or you can modify the plan a little to make it fit.

You can make one seat organizer per jacket, and each includes multiple pockets that can hold items ranging from cell phones to toys. The good thing about using this design in your trunk is that it won’t take up much space but will still keep things organized and tidy. If you know how to sew, the plan is quite easy. If not, it’s obviously more challenging.

2. DIY Mesh Organizer by SewCanShe

The Mesh Organizer is another design that sits on the back of the seats and another one that requires some sewing skills. It doesn’t have as many pockets or compartments as the first plan, but it clips in place between the seats so it is easy to remove, either to carry everything with you or to remove your belongings out of the car when you get home.

It is a good size to hold glasses, purses, and potentially a tablet or small laptop, and you can modify the design so that it has more space or more compartments. Because it is made with mesh, crumbs and other junk won’t get stuck and you can easily see what’s stored inside without having to tip everything out to find a missing item.

3. DIY Trunk Organizer by 100 Thing 2 Do

The Trunk Organizer doesn’t require any sewing skills but it does necessitate the sawing of plywood to match the size and shape of your trunk. If you have a removable base section in the trunk, you can take this out and draw around it. It also uses folding leg brackets, which means that the organizer, which is essentially a table that fits snugly in the trunk area and can be folded down and stored when not in use.

The organizer basically doubles the amount of floor space you have in the trunk, and you can add baskets or other containers to get the organizational features you need.

4. DIY Trunk Organizers by The Best Trunk Organizer

There are three organization tips in this one plan. The two top tips are very basic: use baskets or use net bags.

The third tip is for a folding table-style organizer similar to the one above, but rather than cutting out your own organizer shelf, you use an existing shelf that fits inside the car. Like the plan above it has folding legs, but instead of cutting the legs yourself, you will need to find a set, such as those that are used in boats. Adding carpet to the shelf makes the organizer look better, and if you can match the color of that carpet to the color of the carpet in your boot, it will look like it belongs.

5. DIY Easy-to-Make Car Trunk Organizer by Frugalicious Chick

It doesn’t matter how neatly or carefully you place items in the trunk, the movement of the vehicle means that items will naturally roll and shift around as you drive. Even a short journey can lead to items being moved from their original places and you being left with a pile of trunk junk. An organizer doesn’t have to be complicated or increase the amount of floor space you have to be useful.

This car trunk organizer uses three similarly sized boxes to create a compartmented storage area and then covers your new organizer so that it is more aesthetically pleasing. It’s easy to make and you don’t need to saw or sew anything.

6. Simple DIY Car Trunk Organizer by Instructables

If you’re really only looking to prevent your stuff from flying around the trunk, this really simple car trunk organizer plan uses just a couple of metal bookends and some hanging strips. The hardest thing about it is placing the bookends in the best spot so that you can store whatever you need. Other than that, as long as you know how to apply a hanging strip, you’re good to go.

Conclusion

The car trunk is a convenient and handy place to store things. But it can also be a disorganized nightmare. No matter how long you spend placing bags of groceries, clothes, or toys neatly in the back, by the time you’ve driven away from the front of the house, your beautifully constructed piles end up being a jumbled collection of stuff.

Different vehicles have different trunk shapes and dimensions, and different people have very different requirements for what they need to store and organize. But with a little imagination and modification, you should be able to benefit from one of the six plans above and make something to keep everything in place.

Featured Image Credit: Ella Shin, Shutterstock