This post brought to you by Duck Brand. All opinions are 100% mine.

Earlier this week I was cleaning the kitchen table after dinner. I had also cleaned it up that day after breakfast and after lunch. My family gets to eat most meals together, at our table. Yes we are lucky. Most definitely. We are also MESSY. After spraying down my kids’ eatig area it occurred to me to take a picture for you so you can see what I’m working with 3 times a day, every day.

Obviously I need to start using some placemats. I’ve actually tried placemats before. And guess what? They pretty much fly right off the table because they move so easily. FAIL. I needed something with staying power that would also rinse off really easy (the last thing I need is one more thing to hand wash 3 times a day!). And that’s when I turned to Duck Brand’s Shelf Liner.

That’s right, friends. I made placemats out of shelf liner! And it was the absolute perfect choice for several reasons, not the least of which is that it didn’t involve anything harder than drawing a straight line and using a pair of scissors. That’s my kind of craft! I also love that they come in a variety of colors and patterns, so you can keep your design as simple as you like, or customize it to your color scheme already in place.

I did do a little bit of research (which really just means Googling) to find out standard placemat dimensions. My key takeaway is to pay close attention to the space you have on your table and go from there. My girls sit super close to each other. Their chairs touch, as a matter of fact. So they actually have a pretty small area for their personal space. The smaller Duck® brand shelf liner in the picture above was12 inches wide, so I kept thing easy and went with that for my width. And for length, 16 inches was plenty. You may feel that you need a little bit more for your space, so just measure it out and see what you think!

Once you’ve determined how long you want the placemats, turn them over and grab some sort of a ruler. There are grooves on the back of the placemat, but I can tell you from experience that if you cut along those grooves, you will realized when you flip your placemat back over that they actually weren’t straight lines. So just trust me…get a ruler and make your own straight line!

Once your first placemat is finished, you can use it as the measuring guide for your other placemats. I made 4 to start with, and I’m actually going to go back and make 3 more. If I hadn’t screwed up the first placemat I could have made 8 placemats with one small roll, but I’ll settle for 7.

And I’m happy to report that I was able to wash these on the gentle cycle of my HE washing machine without incident. Maybe you are not as lazy as me and will hand wash yours. That is a great idea, and one that I aspire to, but for now, I’ll just throw it in the laundry pile, thankyouverymuch.

Duck® brand’s Shelf Liners are saving me time (and LOTS of all-purpose cleaner) every day. The girls love them and they stay in place nicely. If you have little ones at home, or even just messy eaters of any age, this is a great hack for making truly functional placemats.

Want more great shelf liner ideas? Check out and follow Duck® brand’s pages on Pinterest and Facebook. After checking those out, did you see any ideas you’d like to try with Duck® brand shelf liner?