Organizing the small things

Our house came with a nice organizer on the back of the basement door.  We used that area as our junk drawer and storage for all those small, miscellaneous items.  It kind of worked. 

The door to our basement is in our dining room, which is in the middle of the house.  And in the winter, it’s better to keep our basement door open.  But it was driving me crazy because we had to look at this ugliness all the time:

  

The shoe organizer was hanging in that small empty spot on the wall.  It had to be easier to look at (and easier to find things). 

I started by removing everything. 

The lath and plaster will eventually be removed and replaced with drywall, but we just needed a quick fix right now.  So we used roofing nails to hang up a canvas drop cloth and cover the ugly. 

Once we had the drop cloth trimmed, we mounted one-inch strips of oak to the studs. Then we hung mini buckets and baskets from cup hooks on each piece of wood.

When we turned our attention to the door, we were surprised to find a very large crack that had been “repaired” with caulk, electrical tape and topped off with packing tape.  How does someone even get to the point where they just try to use packing tape to hold their house together?

All of that fun was removed and replaced with wood filler and then the door and the casing were painted white.  Now the whole area looks like this:

We have storage space to spare and it’s WAY easier to look at. 

The buckets only cost $1 from Target, and the drop cloth was under $20.  We already had the rest of the supplies on hand, so this was a really inexpensive re-organizing project.