I was browsing through Pinterest the other day when I came upon an article that spoke of storage solutions that were not only thrifty but also DIY.  Now, I’m the kind of gal that loves storage, and I love thriftiness, and I love doing it all myself.  Naturally, I clicked on this article, and the first amazing thing that caught my eye was how she called herself a “housie”.

I immediately fell in love with this term.  I am not a “foodie”, but I could definitely call myself a “house”.  The rest of her ideas in this article were just too good to not share:

• Hands down, my favorite suggestion was using metal baskets and securing them to the wall. You can secure them facing up for a basket, or facing out for shelves.  They can hold anything from outgoing mail to your favorite books.  A truly genius idea.
• Those little dip containers that you get from your take-out orders? Save them!  Of course you will need to wash them first, but when they are clean you can decorate the lid with a cute piece of paper and then label them with a sharpie and use them to hold little stuff: keys, safety pins, paper clips, small batteries…
• By now most of us have seen how you can cover and line just about any kind of cardboard boxes and they suddenly become adorable storage cubes.
• If you aren’t into cardboard boxes you can get plain wooden ones from craft stores, on sale, and then spray paint all one color, but then cover the front of each one with different kinds of patterned fabric or paper.
• If you are handy with a saw, or have someone in your life that is, take some old boards and use them to make a caddy. If you are using the caddy in your bathroom make the compartments large enough to hold a small mason jar, which makes for easy cleaning.   Use them to store toothbrushes and toothpaste, hair clips, Q-tips…
• Back to cardboard boxes: cereal boxes apparently make THE best desk organizers and drawer dividers. You can cut them into all sorts of adorable sizes and shapes and glue them all together, or have them separate, or even attach them to the wall or fridge!  This is my second favorite idea, because the Lord knows how many cereal boxes we go through in my house.
• Finally, print out pictures of the toys that go in each bin and then tape them to the front of the bins so that your kids (and anyone helping pick up!) has no doubt about what goes where.