When it comes to storing your things, whether it’s at home or at a self-storage unit, the key is efficiency. You want to maximize your space and make the most out of what you have to work with. This is especially true if you live in an apartment, a condo or a smaller home. Sometimes efficiency also involves making do with the resources you have, and it also means thinking outside the box and utilizing materials for something other than their original, intended purpose.
In this post, we’re going to show you some ways you can use many ordinary household items to help you get organized and maximize the storage space you have available.
Velcro – Stick Velcro tabs inside the walls of your TV or home-entertainment cabinet and then stick the other half of the tabs to smaller TV accessories like remote controls and video game controllers. Velcro also comes in handy when affixing small plastic containers to the inside walls of your pantry or inside the pantry door. These containers are ideal for holding smaller pantry items like sauce packets, powdered drink packets, fruit snacks, etc.
A wine rack – Small plastic wine racks can be inserted into a pantry shelf or kitchen cupboard for storing water bottles and sports bottles, which often take up lots of space when stored in their upright positions. On their sides, you can stack and utilize more space. Also, larger wine racks, the kind that are made with crisscrossing diagonal shelves, are perfect for crafters who need to store large supplies of balled wool.
Egg cartons – Place the lower half of an egg carton in one of the small shelves in your refrigerator door and use them to help store condiment bottles in an upside-down position without them tipping over. The caps of the bottle wedging into the egg cups creates just enough friction to keep the condiments upright. Egg cartons are also ideal for storing smaller Christmas ornaments.
Plastic jugs – Here’s one we bet you’ve never heard of… Place open bags of sugar or flour inside lidded jugs with easy-open spouts. Then when it’s time to measure for your next recipe, you simply pour out through the spout. This not only helps avoid messes, but it also helps you better regulate the amount that you pour. Also consider taking large milk cartons and cutting the top halves off and using the bottom halves (with the handle intact) for storing and carrying miscellaneous items like nails, screws, washers, bolts, etc.
Check back with us in a few weeks, when we bring you even more cool home-storage tips featuring common household items!