By Elizabeth Flaherty
Instant Drying Rack
Does your family have a lot of clothes that cannot be put in the drier? Even those collapsible drying racks with several bars for draping wet clothes still aren’t enough for big laundry days. And if you hang wet clothes on top of wet clothes, it lengthens the dry time significantly and can even leave your clothes smelling a little musty.
To fix your air-drying space shortage, grab a 1×2 board from your scrap stash in the garage and trim it to fit across a few joists overhead in your basement laundry room. Tack it in place with a heavy-duty nail in each joist. Then you can air-dry several more pieces of clothing using hangers!
Write Notes on the Washer
Stop shrinking your sweaters! When you put a load of clothes into your washing machine, use a dry-erase marker to note on the lid which items should not go into the dryer. That way, whoever switches the load from the washing machine to the dryer will know which items to leave out for line drying.
The enamel finish on most washing machine lids is similar to a whiteboard, and dry-erase markers can be removed easily with a dry paper towel.
Lazy Fix for a Disorganized Fridge
Digging to the back of your fridge to find a certain ingredient is a pain. Instead, use a Lazy Susan to bring that food to you! Simply place a lazy Susan on a shelf in your fridge and stock it with condiments and other small containers. Nothing could be easier than spinning your ingredients around to find just what you need.
If you’re short on space or just want to add some extra storage, there are some clever kitchen storage solutions you may not have considered.
Reusable Grocery Bags
Have you ever had a heavy load of groceries that your reusable grocery bag just can’t handle without ripping? Find a scrap piece of plywood lying around your workshop and cut it to the measurements of the base of your reusable grocery bag. Replace the thin plastic insert (so prone to cracking and splitting) with the measured and cut a piece of plywood and place it in the bottom of your reusable grocery bag.
Organize Cleaning Supplies
It can be difficult to keep spray bottles and other cleaning supplies from falling over and making a mess under your kitchen sink. Thankfully, we have plenty of cabinet organization tips and tricks.
To keep your cleaning supplies upright, hang them from a short tension rod inside your cabinet. Another clever idea is to slide a paper towel roll through the tension rod for easy access. This is also a great place to hang dish-drying towels and rubber cleaning gloves.
Save that Six-Pack!
Do all of your small bottles in the refrigerator door like to tip over after opening or closing the door? Fortunately, the answer to tidying those wayward bottles is just a recycling bin away.
To keep all of your condiments under control use an empty six-pack holder to hold and organize the condiments in your refrigerator door.
Wine Box Shoe Storage
Why pay for a fancy compartment-style shoe storage container when you can just pick one up for free at almost any store that sells wine? Designed to protect fragile glass bottles, a wine box is perfect for storing footwear because it comes equipped with cardboard dividers—a place for each shoe! In addition, the exterior cardboard is very sturdy, again to keep wine bottles from breaking, but also great for protecting your kicks in storage!
You could get fancy, too, and paint or cover the exterior of the wine box with decorative wrapping paper if you plan to keep it in your closet or entryway.
Easy Drawer Organizer
My kitchen drawers used to be an absolute wreck; pans and dishes crammed in however they’d fit. And nearly every time I needed something, it was always at the bottom of the drawer. My solution was to cut a piece of 1/8-in. pegboard to the size of the drawer bottom and attach dowels using screws from underneath. Now my pans are organized and easy to access. The 10 minutes it took to build was easily made up for with how much frustration it has saved me.
Pool Noodle Inside a Drawer
I have always hated the way drawer organizers move around when you open and close a drawer. I measured the distance from the back of the drawer organizer to the back of the drawer and used a utility knife to cut the noodle to size. The pool noodle fits snuggly in place, so the drawer organizer doesn’t move around anymore. You could also cut the pool noodle in half lengthwise to reduce the amount of space that it takes up. — Roy Allison
All Your Condiments in One Place
The next time you host a barbecue or a patio party, pull out a muffin tin. Rather than using it to bake muffins (although you can do this later too), fill the cups with various condiments and barbecue toppings. This way your condiments are easy to access and your buffet lines will move along quickly. You will also dramatically increase your table space, and cut down on the separate serving bowls to clean up afterward.
Organize Small Cords
In today’s high-tech homes, keeping track of small cords can be challenging. Almost every electronic device has a cord that goes with it: cameras, smartphones, computers and the list goes on. Rather than tossing them in various drawers throughout your house, where they can get tangled or forgotten, try this simple and inexpensive solution.
Find a small box (a shoe box works perfectly) and fill it with as many empty toilet paper rolls that will fit vertically. Then place a single cord in each toilet paper roll. Next time you need one of your small cords, you’ll know where to find it, and it’ll be free of tangles!
Cardboard Box Bag Dispenser
Need a way to store all of those plastic bags you get from most stores? Here’s an idea: Straighten them out and stack them into an organized pile. Then place the pile in a small cardboard box. Cut a hole in the box so you can pull out one bag at a time as you need it. This works great at our garage sales when we need to bag items for our customers! — John Mylander
This plastic bag dispenser would also be handy in the basement or wherever you keep your cat’s litter box or near your dog’s leash. Then you’ll have a stash of bags ready when it’s time to clean up after your pet.
