Ahh, thrifting. The dark art of saving money. My mom used to take me to thrift stores a lot as a kid. Like a whole lot. Maybe too much. For the longest time I thought it was normal for everything you own to smell like moth balls. I actually miss those thrifting days. It was pretty cool to stumble across some strange toys or useless kitchen appliances that were unique because they hadn’t been sold in stores in years.

Now I’m trying to use my thrifting acumen to hone in on some stuff I can turn into equipment for my little garage screen printing shop. I think I’ve mentioned it before but I love hacks and doing DIY projects (or at least spectating while someone else build something cool). I came across this little gem of a beauty napkin holder at my local Goodwill and with hardly any imagination it was pretty obvious I could turn it into a DIY squeegee rack. Total squeegee rack hack in the making.

DIY Squeegee Rack

Squeegee racks are one of those things to don’t really need for screen printing. They’re not a necessity. But it can be useful if you are wanting an organized way to hold all of your squeegees, or don’t want to set it down somewhere and get ink all over everything since everything else in your life is probably covered in ink by now.

So there wasn’t much to this DIY squeegee rack, but if you watch the video above I think there’s actually a good message here for people wanting to screen print at home. Especially if you want to do it for cheap. Screen printing can be expensive to get started. But it doesn’t have to be. You can build your own screen printing equipment by hacking together things or re-purposing something you’re not using. A squeegee rack is definitely not a big expense by any means, but every little bit counts and if you can save some money…why not do it yourself?