Helpful Home Tips

We moved about a year and a half ago, and I have been finding new and creative ways to organize, store, and just plain "do" things. Here are a few examples; feel free to duplicate if any might be useful to you!

::: Picture Frame Recipe Holder :::

My sister gave me this old seven-part picture frame holder from IKEA. I had been reading a lot about using old picture frames as marker boards, but I wasn't quite sure how to re-purpose this. Then I discovered that with seven frames, I could write the menu for each day on one frame and slide the necessary recipe cards (or coupons if we were going out to eat) in the frame! PERFECT!

::: Fire Escape Ladder :::

My father-in-law actually made this, but gave it to us when they moved to a ranch home and no longer needed it. It is just a thick, sturdy piece of wood with a thick, sturdy rope tied onto it. You can lodge the wood stick to the inside of the window and then throw the rope out and climb down. The rope has notches so one can have hand grips when sliding down the rope. I hope we never need to use it, but I am glad to have it just in case!

::: "Clothesline" for drying zip-close bags :::

Okay, I admit it: I'm a nerd. I wash zip-close kitchen bags. Even the off-brands can be rather expensive, and I hate contributing to landfills any more than I have to. At my old house I attached the wet bags to a cabinet handle with a clothespin and let them hang to dry. Well, here, I don't have cabinet handles! So my wonderful husband, sick of seeing all the bags standing upright on a towel on the counter for days (which didn't work so well since they fell down or collapsed a lot anyway), made a clothesline for me on the underside of my cabinets! The thin rope tucks under a hook to hide out of sight when not in use. How useful!

Now you see it...

... Now you don't!

(The cord tucks away and is hidden from sight!)

::: Pocket Chore Chart :::

I used 8 large 5x7 index cards as the "pockets." I turned them vertically, decorated with stickers and wrote a different day of the week on each. On the last one, I wrote "FINISHED!" Then I stapled them in order onto my bulletin board. 

Next, I cut 4x6 index cards in half lengthwise ("hot dog style", for those of you who remember that from elementary school!) and wrote a different chore on one end of the card. (If that chore, such as dishes or laundry, has to be done several days per week, I wrote it on the appropriate number of cards). At the beginning of the week, I put the chores in the pocket of the day I wish to do them. When I finish a chore, I put it in the "FINISHED!" pocket. It gives me fulfillment to complete a task and then no longer see it on my "to do list" for that day! Moving it to the "finished" pocket is my reward for completing the job!

TIP: If members of the family have different jobs, you could use colored index cards to show different chores - a different color for each person. Or just write on white index cards with different colors of markers.

::: No-Dresser Bedroom Closet Makeover :::

I. Hate. Dressers. 

Chests of drawers, bureaus, overly-large heavy piece of furniture with drawers that don't work right... whatever you want to call them, dressers are so bulky and take up precious space in a cramped room. Yes, I know that they store things, and I do appreciate that. However, they make a room look... cluttered. My husband Dan and I each had a dresser in our bedroom. I vowed that when we moved, I would find a way to do without dressers. Dan and I combined our brain power, and I love the result!

Two bookshelves we already had (and no longer needed since our house had built-in bookshelves) fit nicely under the lower hanging rack. (Both the upper and lower hanging racks were already in place in the closet when we moved in. Someone before us had a lot of hanging clothes!) All my clothes from my dresser fit on the bookshelves. I used cheap plastic baskets (like from a dollar store) to hold and organize loose items like socks and underwear. For Dan's clothes, we bought plastic milk-crate-style baskets from Wal-Mart and stacked two vertically. All of his clothes fit in 5 or 6 of them. 

On the shelf above the folded clothes and under the hanging clothes, we put some out-of-season or special activity shoes, etc. In the corner gaps between bookshelves and crates I put purses and other randomly used things.

Our bedroom has a lot more space now without our two dressers! I love the way it opens up the room and utilizes space in the closet that otherwise would be lost. We don't have a walk-in closet but we still managed to fit a lot in!

I hope some of these tips will be useful to you!