Upcycled hallway organiser
As much as I hate to admit it I am a serial dumper – and before you conjure up your own definition of ‘dumper’ I’ll let you know right now I mean that bad habit of dumping odd bits and pieces around your house until the whole thing looks like a mess. It’s a hard habit I am trying to break and also happens to be one of PJ’s pet peeves, well more specifically my coming in the house and dumping my handbag, keys, sunnies and other junk on the kitchen table. Worse than that, losing my keys (or handbag, or sunglasses) which would drive PJ to insanity just watching me look for them.
Our first solution was to get a basket and put it on the kitchen table which would act as the bowl to put keys, wallets, chewing gum etc. inside. My handbag would go beside it. We also started another bowl system (though this was an enormous salad bowl of mine) which held random things people left behind when visiting, or things we would typically leave out because we wanted to remember to give them to someone or whatever the story was. The only problem? Both bowls started overflowing and once again our kitchen table looked like a mess. We kept trying to find a home for all our things but nothing was quite right, until we decided to install something in the hallway that would take care of everything in an attractive and organised way.
Introducing our upcycled pallet hallway organiser. We also used upcycled food cans as storage devices (mainly for sunglasses at this stage!). I made little interior covers out of scrap fabric so the sharp edges of the cans wouldn’t scratch anything. To make hooks we just grabbed a bunch of leftover nails. It’s so ridiculously easy I feel like I’m not really contributing an innovative idea here – just showing you what we threw together!
I won’t lie, the design was mostly PJ’s idea, but I’d like to think it wouldn’t be upcycled if it wasn’t for me!! We had so many pallets left over from our renovations that we weren’t short of supplies. It doesn’t really require instructions as it is such a simple design. It is screwed into the wall with plugs, but that’s about the only thing you can’t see.
It took a week or two to get used to walking into the hallway and hanging everything where it belonged, but now that the habit has formed it’s awesome to know that all that important stuff is exactly where you know you left it!
When it came to the ‘random bowl of other people’s stuff’ we created a ‘lost and found’ bag instead which doesn’t look so out of place on the organiser.
We feel like it’s a nice homely welcome to our house. Far less offensive than a bunch of random bowls on the kitchen table at least. We keep wondering whether we’ll get sick of it, or whether “shabby chic/upcycled” style will become hideously unfasionable, but then we remind ourselves that it didn’t cost a cent to make so replacing it with something else won’t be heartbreaking. Heck I could even see myself painting it random colours in the future when I get sick of the sight of wood (though anyone who knows us knows we looooooooove the look of wood and our house is evident of that!).
May upcycling and shabby chic stay in fashion forever!!!
