Best of Keeping Drinks Cool in Your Deck Box

With the purchase of your deck box, your entire patio seems complete. Now you have the perfect bench to tie everything together, as well as the perfect place to store all your favorite items you will need to get through the summer days. While your box works like the perfect blessing, it can also curse you with what seems like less space overall on your deck. On the days you're grilling out, you'll find that you have ice chests full of meat and beverage, but they get in the way of your flow of traffic. There should be a way to consolidate and bring everything together, right?

If you have a deck box, and want to make it an ice box during the summer, there are several easy ways to make sure you are getting the best of both worlds. Yes, you too can have a consolidated patio that brings about all the great aspects of summer in one convenient box. While it may sound rather ambitious, bringing it all together just takes a little ingenuity and good old-fashioned know how.

Regardless of what your deck box is made of, making a cooler out of it is not as hard a process as it sounds. Both plastic and wood boxes serve as great insulators to keep the cold inside without having your watery problems leak out. The result: cold drinks surrounded by even colder ice, kept cool for hours at a time. The only major difference in the two possible materials (plastic or wood) is how we will approach turning your deck box into a deck cooler.

If you have a plastic deck box, all of the work of sealing in the cold has been done for you, as plastic is naturally resistant to water. To turn your box into a cooler, first clean it out with warm water and a mild cleaner, like a dish soap (because nobody wants to drink dirty beverages). Once you are done, fill it with ice and enjoy your cold drinks at anytime! Once the ice is melted away, and to remove the remaining water from the ice, simply tip over gently, and let the water flow onto your lawn.

If you have a deck box made of wood, turning it into a cooler will take an extra step, but will be well worth it once you have a consolidated patio space. Many wood boxes come with snaps around the inner edge. This allows you to install a vinyl liner, which makes it easier to store ice inside the cooler, without letting it soak into or around your wood. Simply snap the liner around the edge, fill with ice, and enjoy! Once you are done, unsnap the edges, carry the water in the liner to an appropriate dumping place, and let the water go.

If your deck box didn't come pre-installed with snaps to install one of these crucial liners, don't worry about it too much. If you have a smaller deck box, there is still hope to consolidate everything together. With a little ingenuity, you too can still make a cooler out of your deck box. To start, take a heavy-duty trash bag that will fit inside your deck box. If you have old blankets laying around that you don't worry over too much, pack them around the edges - this will serve as additional insulation, and protect from any stray beads of water dripping into your box. Cut the trash bag down from the opening, and fit the trash bag in snugly around your blankets. Add ice, and you've just created an ice chest! To empty, just remove the trash bag and dispose at will.

As the famous old adage goes, "Less is More." This has never been quite as true with a deck box, as they allow you to have more fun with taking up less room at the same time!