We live in an older home with zipp-o storage. The area which was designated for the washer & dryer before we bought it, was - not long before that - a back porch. We managed to make a place for hanging clothes, and to install a couple of shelves above the appliances. Here lives not only laundry soap, stain removers, and bleach, but light bulbs, cat food & paraphernalia, dead flashlights, picnic & beach stuff, coolers, hiking gear... oh yes, and garden dreams (mostly in the form of seed packets) and canning supplies. Talk about a clutter nightmare!
As I was thinking about how to tame this beast, I decided what was needed was some visual consistency (restful to the eyes), a functional way to combine "like items", and easy access. My solution was to acquire a number of large plastic gelato tubs (at the time my daughter worked as a barrista in a coffee shop - convenient!) which I spray painted yellow, then I just laid some assorted leaves on them and shot on some green and rust spray paint, allowing the leaves to act as stencils. The smaller items went into the tubs, and this has successfully worked for some years now - except for now and then forgetting what category was in which tub.
When the framelits labels dies arrived in the studio, I knew the final piece of the puzzle was about to fall into place. I typed my categories into Word and ran them onto very vanilla CS, then ran these through my Big Shot with the framelits and added color with stamps and some vintage buttons (actually, I can still picture the buttons in a row down the front on my grandmother's bath robe).
There you have it. Although in April we have Earth Day to remind us to think twice before we label something trash, my family has always believed in Reduce, Reuse, Recycle as a praiseworthy way to utilize our God-given creativity. Hope this will spur you to think how you might re-purpose some "trash" into useful service. -Kathy
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