Below is an organizing tip submitted by reader Robin.
Not only has the empty shoebox helped me get organized, it’s kept me in budget.
I have two daughters who love shoes. I have taken all their cast off showboxes and used them to get organized around my house!
In the bedroom
- bras
- underwear
- socks – one for blacks, one for browns, one for other colors, one for athletic socks
- tights and hose
In the bathroom closet
- medicines by type
- nail polish – actually this is a Velveeta box! These work great too.
- sunscreen/bug spray/summer oinments
In the kitchen
- spice/soup/mix packets
- some of my bigger jars of spices – actually this is Velveeta box too!
- cookie sprinkles, food coloring an the like!
You could spray paint or cover the boxes in pretty paper, but I just fill them up and add them to a shelf. All is in order. So easy. So affordable!
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photo credit: intransit
I use similar boxes in my fridge as well. They’re great for keeping bottles and jars of condiments contained. Then when you need one you just pull the whole the whole box forward, rather than having to root to the back of the fridge to fridge to find the jar of jam or bottle of mustard.
Im curious about using them in the fridge. Doesn’t the cardboard separate/break down from the humidity? What about cleaning up spills? How often do you have to replace them?
Author of “Welcome to Grandparenting”- This is a great craft idea for when the grandchildren visit. It then can be used to store their play dough, etc. for other visits! Grandparents, take note!
We do this but I can not keep anything with cardboard in the house due to spiders. Brown recluse spiders are very poisonious and love, and I mean LOVE, cardboard. So anything that is cardboard is gotten out of the house. My husband even built custom cabinets with shelving to fit the plastic shoeboxes.
Thanks for the tip! Been saving two heavy duty workboot shoeboxes knowing I could find something to do with them. This was the perfect soloution. I even fliped the box tops upside down and used those too!
Use the empty spaghetti,mayo etc jars to store rice
Pasta stuff like that in. You can also paint or decorate
It too.also good to fill with a beverage to go with you.
Soda bottles can become water bottles. Less
Trash and saves money. You can store about
Anything. I save the cans from canned veggies,
Cleaned and painted them. I use one for pencils
And gave one as a gift.
I don’t find that the humidity damages them at all, so the only time I replace them is when something spills in them. The ones with a glossy paper coating inside can have small spills and crumbs wiped out of them, while the plain cardboard ones will need to be replaced more often. I think I’ve only had to replace mine a few times a year. This hasn’t been a big deal because the boxes are free and fairly plentiful. I don’t use only shoe boxes, but many types of food packaging boxes as well. If they are too tall, I cut down the sides and occasionally reinforce the corners with duct tape if needed.
I will take boxes and cover them in extra wrapping paper to use in the bathrooms for my daughter’s hair/makeup, the linen closet for meds/travel size soaps/ect and in my pantry for certain packaged foods like rice packets/noodle packets/cookie mixes. It helps organize and the paper gives that area a personality of it’s own.
I like using old soda boxes (the refridgerator kind) and organizing can goods in my pantry. I try to cover the boxes with wrapping paper or something to make it pretty.
I use cute little jelly or condiment glass jars for Q-tips and my daughter’s hair clips in the bathroom. I also re-use larger glass jars {from sauce, pickles, fruit, etc} to store my dry pasta and rice in the pantry. I love the uniform look of the jars and can see how much I have left.
I also re-purposed a large gourmet popcorn jar {like the kind Target} sells for our vacation fund. I decorated it with cute scrapbook paper {vacation style}.
We get Harry and David fruit of the month in boxes that are really sturdy. I’m putting old cd’s in them and then I think I will start putting toys in them. They are just so darn useful.
The Harry and David pear boxes are excellent for ornament storage.
I just saw another idea for using shoebox tops on HGTV!
The designer took tops of shoe boxes and covered them with interesting fabric that matched the decor. Then she put them up on the wall in a line…but you could do any arrangement. It looked like art!
We use the big square Animal Cracker containers to store toys. One for barbies, lego’s, linkin logs, baby toys, cars, train set, tea set. They have lasted us for the past 6 years even with the kids sometimes throwing them around or falling on them. Our church goes through them and toss them at the end so this is a great way of recycling them. We use the big glass containers that you buy pickles in to store our rice. Cleaned jelly jars to store the beans you buy in bags.