Standing desk with book holder

Back to Making things with cardboard!

This is a standing desk for studying. I’m re-visiting mathematics in adulthood and having a dedicated standing station with everything ready to go makes it way more likely that I’ll stop by, if even only for a few minutes and do a few problems.

Desk space is at an absolute premium in our house, so getting this to take up as little linear space as possible was important. Having the book holder above the "desk" allows my paper notebook and other items to drift underneath the book in a natural way, while remaining visible.

The book is a very heavy 1,000+ page tome, but the double-ply cardboard I’m using here is from a box made for shipping an office chair and is plenty strong enough for the task.

(If you don’t have double-ply cardboard, you can make it yourself by gluing layers of cardboard together - you can even alternate the direction of the flutes for amazing strength in any direction.)

Below is just empty space. I made a flat "door" to cover the space. How big is the space? Let’s take a look…​

Oh, a pumpkin! How handy!

For real, this has been great for getting some less-used bulky items out of sight.