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Dollar Store Finds to Keep You Organized

Jon Fesmire | August 24, 2016 @ 3:00 PM

When it comes down to it, isn’t the point of self storage to help keep your home or office organized, spacious, and free of clutter? Once you have your storage unit and have put what you need to in it, you may find your home could use some fine tuning. Look no further than your local dollar stores for items to help improve your home organization on a budget.

All About Boxes and Bins

Bins and boxes, made of plastic, canvas, or wicker, can go a long way toward keeping your home better organized. Here are some possibilities.
  1. Use bins in your clothing drawers to separate out types of clothing. Kids especially, tend to get their shirts mixed up in one drawer, pants and shorts in another, and so on. At the very least, this method can help keep school shirts from being mixed in with t-shirts, and underwear with socks. With a little encouragement, you may be able to get them to fold or roll up their clothes within the bins.

  2. Smaller bins and containers work great for kitchen, desk, and bathroom drawers. If you don’t care for standard silverware separators, a set of plastic boxes may work better. Or you may use them to separate items in your free-for-all kitchen drawer, where you keep rubber bands, matches, and batteries. In your desk, they can help you keep pencils, pens, and the like organized, and in the bathroom, they may be more convenient than a medicine cabinet for pills, toothpaste, and toothbrushes.

  3. Metal mesh file boxes can have multiple uses. What can you do with them hung on a wall? In your office, you can keep incoming and outgoing mail in them where you’ll see them frequently. In the bathroom, you could use one to store certain lotions and shampoos.

  4. Need cute, cheap shelving for a kid’s room? Install some plastic crates in row along a wall, open end facing out. You can use them for your children’s books and stuffed animals, giving them more floor space for when they play.

  5. Speaking of storing toys, those easily-stored, pop-up, round hampers may be made for laundry, but they make great toy storage bins, too. Put one in the corner of your child’s room and toss in stuffed animals or rubber balls.

  6. An attractive way to keep extra towels available in the bathroom is to attach wicker baskets, open side out, on the bathroom wall. Then, fold or roll up your towels and wash rags and stack them neatly within.

Hang It Up

While boxes and bins help sort a variety of items, and make room on walls for storage, there are a variety of dollar store purchases you can use to organize your closets and even bathroom by hanging items.
  1. Your shower rod is great for keeping the curtain in place, keeping the floor dry, and giving you privacy. Just think what you could do with a second! Get another shower rod installed next to the first, and use it to hang baskets for soap, shampoo, and a loofah. You can often do this with shower hooks.

  2. Shower hooks have a number of uses, in fact. Want to keep your scarves or ties easily organized in one place? Put shower hooks on a standard plastic clothes hanger, and drape a scarf or tie through each, then hang it up in your closet. You can also use them to hang belts!

  3. Shoe hangers can be amazing for storing favorite items. Hang it from a wall and think about all you could put in it. Of course, they’re made to store all your shoes, and you may need one for that, anyway. You can also use them to store small stuffed animals, video game accessories, art supplies, and a lot more.

Very Small Containers

Look around a dollar store and you’ll find many small containers with specific functions. With a little imagination, these can be adapted to help keep track of many other things.

  1. Craft boxes, with their multitude of small sections, are great for storing a variety of tiny items. For example, if your child has some small, specific Lego pieces that are hard to find, sort them into such a box to make building easier. They’re also great for hair accessories, beads, and more.

  2. Plastic soap containers just happen to be the perfect size for other things. Use one to store your favorite pack of cards or loose crayons. Lost the box for a board game? Use soap containers to keep the cards, dice, or playing pieces.

  3. Pill carriers help people plan out their medication a week in advance and make sure they take the right dosage. Do you like putting your own spices on food when you eat out? Use a pillbox to carry them with you and pinch out that white pepper or garlic on your food. Going on a trip and want to not only plan out your jewelry for each day, but keep it all together? Use a pillbox to organize your earrings and necklaces.

  4. Back to spices, when storing them at home, pick up some small ball mason jars from your dollar store. Put a different spice in each, and label each jar. These stack well and give a homey look to any cabinet.

The biggest take-away from this article should be this: with a bit of creativity, you can make your home more attractive, better organized, and a more relaxing place to live on a dollar store budget. Take these suggestions and run with them!

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