5 Clever Ways to Organize Your Drawers
Your drawers aren't getting any bigger, but your pile of stuff is. So, try these oh-so-simple ways to maximize your storage space.
By Pamela Masin
Reach Your Dishes More Easily
If you're tired of standing on your tippy-toes to reach your plates, try storing dishes in a deep pullout drawer for easier access. To keep them from moving around inside,
install a pegboard to the bottom of the drawer and use wooden dowels to secure the plates in place (and prevent chips and scratches). An even handier approach: Pick a drawer close to your dishwasher to speed up how long it takes to put dishes away, giving you a few extra minutes to relax before your favorite Tuesday-night show begins.
Thing to remember: Make sure you can wedge your dowels into the pegboard before you purchase them, since hole sizes can vary among manufacturers.
Stick It to Chaos
To keep organizing trays from sliding around inside your drawer,
stick adhesive strips on the bottom of them, so you won't have to search for pens when you're trying to write a fast "pick up milk" note for your partner before rushing out the door.
Thing to remember: If you want to be able to bring the tray to another room, use Velcro sticky strips, which will let you remove the tray, then snap it back in place after.
Have Your Drawers Work Twice as Hard
It's a two-for-the-price-of-one storage trick: Take a deep drawer, create a second level that rests above the original, add drawer slides so the new level moves across the top, then marvel at how easy it was to double your space without doing a major renovation. Follow
Debbie Thompson's guide, on her blog Me and My DIY, to creating a two-tier drawer system, and then use it to streamline kitchen utensils or to keep cosmetics all in one place.
Thing to remember: Your drawer should be at least 3 and 3/4 inches tall to be able to accommodate a second sliding level.
Photo: Ainhoa from A Little Bite of Everything
Put Your Tees into a System
The answer to your stressful (and messy) T-shirt drawer was hiding in your office all this time. Instead of stacking shirts one on top of another, Ainhoa Vega, of the lifestyle blog
A Little Bite of Everything, created a filing system—so she could see all her options at once—by attaching two towel rods to the front and back of her drawer, and then folding tees on thin metal rods that slid perpendicular.
Thing to remember: To find the right-size top rods, measure the distance between the two towel rods, then add on 3 or 4 more inches, since both ends need to be bent into "c" shapes around the horizontal rod so they can slide.
Upcycle After Sunday Brunch
Egg cartons are just the right size to corral small, loose objects like paper clips, thumbtacks and erasers in your desk drawer; sewing supplies, such as threads, buttons and safety pins in a junk drawer; or, condiments (
placed upside down) in your fridge, which puts an end to having to continuously bang on the ketchup bottle to get it to come out of the bottle.
Thing to remember: Wash foam egg cartons with soap and hot water, and cardboard ones with rubbing alcohol, before using the egg cartons, in order to kill any bacteria on them.
Published 12/01/2014
