Keep ordinary kitchen containers out of the trash with these tips for creative organizing:
- Use baby food jars to store spices and hardware. Label and date the spices.
- Don't toss those cute little lemon and lime dispensers. Instead, fill them with hand lotion — they make great portable dispensers. Rinse and clean the containers first, and make a wider opening in the end if necessary to fill the container.
- Save the plastic zippered packaging that blankets and mattress pads come in and use it to hold craft materials such as yarn and knitting needles. Make a hole in the packaging, thread the yarn through the hole and use the bag as a yarn dispenser.
- Use mesh fruit and vegetable bags, such as the ones onions and oranges come in, as storage bags for the bathroom and other areas. Use the bags to store bath toys, or use them to carry toiletries to the gym. Put a bar of soap in a mesh bag and hang it near an outdoor faucet and use it to wash up after dirty outdoor jobs.
- Decorate a coffee can with self-adhesive paper and use it to hold kitchen utensils.
- Decorate those empty tuna-fish cans with self-adhesive paper and put them next to the kitchen sink to store steel-wool pads.
- Decorate empty powdered beverage containers and fill with candy and small toys to use as party favors at a child's birthday party.
- Use corks as tack holders in a home office.
Provided by HGTV - http://www.hgtv.com
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