If home organization is on your New Year’s resolution list, you might realize this goal can become expensive quickly. Retail is chock full of products designed to store your things and make your life easier. Even if you find everything on sale, the price of organizing an entire house can rack up quickly. So why not use the inspiring storage solutions found online and in stores to get creative with the items already taking up space in your house?
1. Paper towel holders
If you have spare paper towel holders to get rid of, don’t throw them away! You’ve probably seen the hack where you can use an installed, wall-mounted rack to dispense under-cabinet items in your kitchen like trash bags, cling wrap, or foil. Get creative and think about organizing with any roll-dispensing items in your home you might need organized. Even a short wrapping paper roll or tissue paper can fit on one of these to organize your gift wrapping supplies.
2. Command strips/hooks
If you have spare nails, hooks, or command strips crowding your junk drawer, get them out of there and put them to use as organization tools! In the photo below, you can see how I have used a set of command strips (and a repurposed plastic bin) to get my cleaning supplies off the floor of my supply closet. Try organizing hooks in a pattern on closet walls or inside cabinets to neatly display a wide array of hangable items.
3. Boxes
If your house is anything like mine, you’re constantly overloaded with cardboard boxes. Lately, instead of getting rid of them all, I’m giving them new life. One shoe box recently made its way into my sock drawer as a dividing compartment. Sturdy boxes might even make their way onto my closet walls. By mounting them, I can use them as under-shelf storage for lightweight items. When it comes to those items you can’t part with but which have no place in your house, large boxes shouldn’t be overlooked to simply whisk them out of sight to a basement or attic storage.
4. Books
Have too many books lying around that you don’t read? Rather than donating or tossing them, try repurposing. Attractive books make great decorations on shelves or coffee tables. Even unattractive books can be repurposed as decor by creating an attractive cover sleeve. When stored on shelves, books make excellent dividers to break up blocks of organization. They can be filed vertically to separate groupings of other items, or stacked horizontally to anchor the space for a small decorative item to top the stack without them looking too small for the space.
5. Metal or plastic tins
In most households, Christmas presents contained in metal or plastic tins with holiday decoration printed on them have been received this holiday. And in many households, these end up thrown away. But there are so many things you can do with them! Because they come in so many shapes, materials and sizes, I can’t tell you what to do with your specific container, but here are a few ideas. The easiest solution to using these is reusing them for the same purpose next year. Just pack them away with the holiday decor until next season and instead of buying containers next year for the homemade gifts you plan to give, grab them and use them! Now, if you want to get more creative, these make excellent storage for small items that need to be corralled. Try them for small parts in a child’s bedroom, like doll or action figure accessories. Or use them in the garage for all those screws currently kept in the manufacturer’s box that’s falling apart. If you can find a shelf or drawer where your tin fits snugly, even better. You can even paint or cover the tins in other material if you’re going to store things somewhere in sight.
6. Magazines, Catalogs, Newspapers
I personally hate having this type of clutter in my house, especially when so much information is available digitally. So, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of ways to make it not be junk when it appears. First and foremost, I do a lot of shipping, so all of these items can be wadded up to fill space and make excellent free packing material. Beyond that, newspaper makes great drop cloth material in times of painting or doing other messy work. Newspaper and magazines also are the perfect material for decoupage, if you want to get crafty and recover the surface of a piece of furniture in your home. If you have holes in walls to patch, wadded pieces of newspaper or magazine work well as filling material, to give spackle something to latch onto.
7. Old towels
If there are towels in your home that have become too worn or stained or faded to continue using in your bathroom, don’t throw them out just yet. Old towels serve their purpose in dirty cleaning jobs, so you may want to store them in the garage for future jobs. Like newspapers and magazines, disposable towels can also serve as great packing material for shipping, or between your possessions when packing for a move. If the old towels are salvageable and you still have no use for them, try donating. At the very least, you’ll gain storage space in your closet or cabinet and give the towel new life.
For more ways to cut down on your budget as part of your 2025 New Years Resolutions, also see this post. And if for some reason you do want to splurge, I highly recommend shopping The Container Store for some of the most efficient and aesthetic storage solutions I’ve ever seen.