Dollar Tree display easel as a DIY tablet/phone stand

My HiSense Sero 7 Pro tablet died, so I recently picked a Fire HD 8 (2017) 32 GB from Amazon since they were discounted due to the new 2018 models that are available now. I also gave one to my mom for her birthday to replace her aging Galaxy Tab 2 7.0".

With my old tablet, I had a folio case that also doubled as a stand, which was good for landscape mode only.

I'm not planning on getting a case for the Fire HD 8. It doesn't really seem necessary. I did want a way to have it stand, so I went out to my local Dollar Tree to check out their electronics aisle for any tablet stands. They had none... not even the two I saw YouTube videos for (ones actually sold as a "tablet stand"). So I looked for the next best thing... the display easels in the picture frame aisle.

They come in small, medium, and large sizes - and in gold, silver, or black colors.

I didn't really care about the color, I cared more about the quality of it. So I tested out each one to see which one was the least crooked and picked the two of the small ones that I liked best (one for me, one for my mom).

I left the cardboard on it so that it hopefully wouldn't scratch my Fire HD and also looked for things that I could add to it that would leave the least amount of scratches - I covered it with an old sock for some padding, but despite my efforts, it still left some scratches on the back. Some people might not care about scratches since it's the back of the tablet, but it bothers me. I haven't been able to completely buff them out.

I looked around the house some more and found a drink koozie that I wasn't using and it fit over the easel (with the sock on) perfectly.

Dollar Tree display easel tablet stand

I'm confident that there won't be any new scratches now.

I also went to WalMart today to look for another koozie for my mom's easel and found one on clearance for 25 cents. So for a total of $1.75 for my mom's easel ($1), 1 sock that I don't wear anymore (also from Dollar Tree - pair of socks $1, 1 sock = 50 cents), and 25 cents for the koozie for a tablet stand that won't scratch our tablets. My stand only cost me $1.50 since the koozie I used was free.

Dollar Tree find: snack containers as small storage boxes

These are sold at Dollar Tree as 3 pack of Plastic Snack Containers with Lock-Top Lids. I haven't actually used them for that purpose though. I think they wouldn't be so great as a snack container because if you want to fill them up completely, when you open them up, it's possible that some of your snack will come spilling out of it, due to the way that the lid makes up about the top 1/3 of the container.

What I use them for, so far, are storage boxes, mostly for tiny electronic items, such as batteries, memory cards, and cables.

As you can see, they can fit quite a bit of stuff in them. I'd probably be able to fit in more memory cards if I took each card out of their individual cases, but since I don't actually have many more than that and they still fit inside, I kept them in their cases. In total, there are 10 memory cards/adapters of various sizes, two micro SD card readers, and one USB wifi adapter. The one in the middle has 10 AA and 2 AAA batteries, with room for a little bit more. The one on the right has a USB power bank, a USB car charger, 1 micro USB cable, and 2 lightning cables.

There were 3 packs of 3 at the time I bought these, but I only bought 2 of them since I didn't know how many I'd need or what they might be good for. I haven't seen them in the store since then, so maybe I should've bought them all because I have plenty more cables to store.

If you're actually looking for something that'd be good as a snack container, I'd probably get these instead because of their flip top lids. I've only seen them in store with Disney's Frozen characters on them and none of the plain ones. They're also only sold individually, so $1 each. If I could find the 2 packs of those in stores, I'd probably at least pick up one of them because they seem like they'd be perfect for snacking.