If charging all the electronic devices in your home has become a chaotic nightmare of jumbled cords, let me introduce you to my DIY charging bench for electronic devices.
It’s a way to hide all of your charging cables and devices in plain sight.
It’s my answer to the kitchen charging drawer because I’ve always wanted one of those, but we’ve never had a spare kitchen drawer with outlets in the back.
I won’t promise this charging bench will eliminate all the cord chaos, but it can help you hide it. That’s half the battle!
A charging bench can be made from any bench that has a hidden storage compartment.
The storage part of the bench just needs to be large enough to hold whatever needs to be charged: tablets, phones, watches, etc.
We made our bench from scratch because we couldn’t find exactly what we wanted in stores to meet our space, style, and storage needs.
Our bench measures approximately 60 inches long, 20 inches tall, and 14 inches deep.
The most important part of the DIY charging bench, besides the hidden storage part, is that it needs a hole drilled through the bottom of the bench that is big enough to thread the power cord for a charging station.
If you don’t have one, a charging station is like a power strip for electronic devices. (This is the one we currently have.)
Only one cord (the one for your charging station) should be coming out of your DIY charging bench and plugging into an outlet. That’s how you make this DIY charging bench look clean and tidy from the outside.
We’re not going through this effort so that we see tons of cords. We’re going through this effort so that we DON’T see the cords.
I’m not a medical expert, but I’m pretty sure seeing cords all the time cannot be good for one’s blood pressure.
Drill the hole in a place that is close to one of the bench legs because you’ll want to hide the charging station power cord behind one of those legs.
Depending on the size of your power cord you can use zip ties or tiny Command hooks to hold the cord in place to the back of the bench leg.
I suppose if your outlets are high enough up on the wall you could drill your hole through the back of the bench too. Every house and bench is different, so do whatever works best to hide that cord!
You may also need to drill additional holes in the bench for added ventilation for your devices so that they don’t overheat. This is all situationally dependent and assumes the only thing kept in the charging bench are devices that need to be charged, so keep an eye on things because SAFETY FIRST.
Let’s talk about how you could take this DIY charging bench to the next level.
If I’m not going to do it, someone should!
The next level on this project would be to make slots or compartments for each device to nestle nicely in. Wouldn’t that be lovely?
It would be SO lovely…if my family used them. An organizational system is only as good as the people using it. Based on past experience, I think we’re good with keeping things very basic…just a big ol’ box with a lid.
At least it’s a pretty box with gorgeous legs!
We want this DIY charging bench to last a long time.
That means it needs to be flexible enough to store and charge not just what devices we have today, but those we might have three years from now. Who knows what size phones will be then? That’s another reason why we kept the interior of the bench very simple.
Someday our kids will be old enough that we don’t have to be so strict about device usage and having them check their devices in at the end of the day to be charged in one spot. When that happens maybe this bench will be used as an actual sitting spot! Or maybe I’ll store something different inside of it.
As you can see, the world charging bench is my oyster. Full of possibility!
I’m so happy we built this charging bench. Our devices now have a gorgeous, concealed area to be charged and the best part of all is that the chord chaos is now hidden from my view!
P.S. If you take this idea and use it in some way, shape, or form in your own house, let me know in the comments or by tagging me on Instagram or Facebook. I’d love to see what you create!
Project Resources:
While our charging bench was custom designed by us for our space, here are some of the products we used to make it come to life!
Stain – Varathane Special Walnut
Sealer – Waterlox
Legs – Lowe’s (We were super impressed with the look, quality, and cost of these pre-built legs.)
Charging Station – Amazon. We got this charging station this summer because it has regular USB ports and the newer USB Type C port. So far, no complaints.
*affiliate links in this blog post*
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