Turn clutter into storage and decorating solutions

Tag : gift ribbons
3 Clutter-Busting Concepts
These three key steps will get you on your way to making order inyour home using basic everyday items:
1. Contain
Enough storage space is, of course, the Holy Grail of anyhousehold. But solutions to the problem are probably littering yourclosets and cupboards right now. Use monochromatic boxes, woodencrates, berry baskets, and empty jars to stash anything frommementos to old files, paper clips to dried spices.
2. Repeat
Transform stray containers or collectibles into a decorativetableau by clustering like objects. Consistency produces a neaterlook than a random assembly does -- and while one or two may lookarbitrary, a group looks like art.
3. Repurpose
Although your lidless sugar bowl and your wobbly chair no longerserve their original purposes, they're far from useless. You caneke a second life out of idle treasures by assigning them newfunctions -- and, in so doing, add style to the surfaces theygrace. (Learn how to repurpose stuff from your closets and drawers .)
Contain Photos and Letters in Shoe Boxes
You don't need to buy fancy fabric-covered storage boxes. Raid yourcloset for an attractive array of shoe boxes, which can holdphotos, stationery, or old letters, then stack them on yourbookshelves. Combine them with hat, shirt, or gift boxes in othersizes. Affix labels noting the contents; create consistency byusing the same labels and ink color. (You can also use a shoebox to organize your gift ribbons .)
RS Tip: sturdy boxes in the same or complementary colors, with matchinglids.
Contain Towels and T-Shirts in Wooden Crates
Take crates that once teemed with clementines or old flea-marketfinds originally used for wine bottles and convert them intostorage for towels in the bathroom or T-shirts in the bedroom.(Don't worry -- they won't look like the plastic milk crates thatheld your record collection in college.)
RS Tip: A single crate provides useful, efficient storage in tight spaces.Two or more together look like a piece of furniture.
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