(Re)Organize Your Life, Episode I

Let's face it. Sometimes we are so busy making sure that our professional selves are nice and tidy (files in their space, inbox under control, messages answered) that our home selves suffer! But reorganizing and tackling the clutter is sometimes so daunting that we'd rather just shove the stuff in a closet and forget about it. And for a lot of us, that works. But for my generation, we are apartment dwellers. We can't quite afford the house in the suburbs, 2.5 kids and a golden retriever. So every square inch counts for us!

A lot of times, the junk we collect sits around because we can't quite figure out what to do with it. Sometimes it's mismatched or misplaced members of a pair that we hold on to, and so there it is, collecting dust and taking up space. Time to reuse those leftovers!

Real Simple magazine, one of my MOST FAVORITE magazines (Don't worry InStyle and Dogfancy, mama still loves you) has a great newsletter they send via email, and the following tips are from one of their articles.


7 Double Duty Decorating Ideas:

1. Use earrings as pushpins- if you've lost the mate to a lovely set of studs, use the remaining stud as a lovely pushpin. It will brighten up any corkboard to-do list!

2.  Dress up your refrigerator door with rarely worn brooches- remove the pin with wire cutters, glue a magnet to the back and voila! a lovely, sentimental magnet. Way more chic than that god-awful tchotchke magnet Mom and Dad brought from their trip to Dollywood...

3. Coffee cans as a wine rack- use a can opener to cut off the bottoms of multiple aluminum cans, spray paint the outsides so they are all uniform, then glue together in a balanced, artful way with Krazy Glue or another strong adhesive.

4. Cupcake foils as votives- got leftover cupcake foils from that over-zealous cupcake phase? They make great votives for tea lights. Best part? Throw them away when the candle melts! No muss, no fuss. Wish you could say the same for those cupcakes.

5. Cake stand as a candle platform- we all have those gorgeous cake stands, but most of the time they sit their collecting dust. Why not use the plate as a pedestal for pillar candles? Make sure you put a doily or even some parchment paper under the candles to protect the plate from the wax.

6. Salt and pepper shakers as bud vases- unscrew the cap, clean, fill with water, and oh look isn't that precious? A bud vase!

7. Wallpaper as drawer liners- got extra wallpaper? ( I know, who really uses wallpaper anymore, but you never know). Anyway, the scraps, when cut to fit drawers, make lovely drawer liners. It's a nice touch.

You can read more at Real Simple Magazine- new uses for old things if you want more tips.