Home life can be a challenge if your dwelling is lacking on square footage.
Sure, you love your urban apartment or sweet starter home, but cramped quarters and a lack of storage space can leave your living area feeling stressful and unorganized. No matter how small your home or apartment is, a bit of resourcefulness can easily help you kick the clutter while making your humble abode look bigger, brighter, and more welcoming.
To get you started, Earth911 rounded up 11 storage solutions that you can make yourself from reused materials.
1. Repurposed Book Knife Caddy
Sometimes a book can end up damaged, loved to pieces, or end up taking up space in your home. If you don’t feel like donating the books to a library or the like, another possible use is making a customized knife caddy. Follow the instructions from Town & Country Living to turn your old copy of Anna Karenina into a home for your knives in the kitchen.
2. Office Paper Holder From Cereal Boxes
Surprisingly, most large cereal boxes are the perfect size for storing paperwork or folders in the office. Follow the instructions from Rustric Crafts to turn your cereal boxes into a decorative paper holder for the office. Get organized by reusing your breakfast packaging.
3. Sew and Rope Delivery Box
With a little elbow grease, the packaging from your mail can be remade into a homey storage box. You’ll need some hemp rope, glue, fabric, and a sewing machine to transform that Amazon box into a holder for cards, toilet paper, or soaps. Find the instructions on Hometalk.com.
4. Upcycled Guitar Shelf
Here’s a shelving option with a bit of musical character. If you’ve got a broken acoustic guitar, this guide from Tastefully Eclectic will help turn your old instrument into aesthetically pleasing shelving space.
5. Plastic Bottle Hanging Storage
Old plastic bottles are more useful than you might think. Using this guide from Popular Woodworking, you can repurpose both large and small plastic bottles into hanging storage containers, for food or workbench supplies.
6. File Cabinet Garage Storage
Have an old filing cabinet you’re not using, or has started getting into a state of disrepair? With a little refurbishing, and guidance from Homedit, you can turn that old office cabinet into a new storage unit for your garage.
7. Upcycled Shutter Magazine Rack
You can easily repurpose old window shutters into chic home décor. They make good decorative hangings and, in this guide from Instructables, you can learn how to turn an old shutter into a useful magazine rack.
8. Recycled Drawer Shelves
Have an old dresser that’s falling apart? Try repurposing the drawers as hanging shelves, as explained on Organized Clutter. It is a great use for the wooden parts that would otherwise go to a landfill, and an attractive storage solution.
9. Pallet Laundry Basket Holder
Have a few laundry baskets that fill up quickly, and take up space in your hallways? With a couple of used wooden pallets, you can construct a handy compact basket holder. Browse through Moolton’s laundry basket holder ideas for one that suits your needs.
10. Rake Kitchen Utensil Holder
The Gracious Wife brings this suggestion to the table: If you’ve recently broken a rake in the yard, you can repurpose the rake-head into a rustic utensil display. It’s a perfect storage solution for the kitchen.
11. Piano Workbench
Thinking a little outside the box, here’s another musical refitting option. If you’ve got a piano that’s no longer working properly, you could follow this guide from Core77, and rework the instrument into a hidden workbench area for your home.
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