Category Archives: Life Hacks

Life Hacks I Love: #2 Organizing Your Dresser

I found this idea on Pinterest months ago and it made so much sense to me. Don’t you hate it when you go to dig a t-shirt out of your dresser drawer and you either can’t find it or you mess up the whole stack trying to maneuver it from the bottom of the pile? I used to hate that! Not anymore, I decided to rearrange my clothes in a vertical formation as suggested on Pinterest. It works beautifully! So, if you are in the mood to get organized, you have got to try this. It really works and is easy to manage.

dresser drawers

The above photo is actually of my husband’s dresser drawer. He has so many t-shirts wedged in there, you can barely open and close the drawer. He has not yet converted to the new system. You can only see the shirts that are on the top of the pile and it is difficult to get a shirt in and out, let alone find the one you are looking for. Fortunately for him, he really only wears blue and black, so I guess pretty much any one will do!

Okay, this is seriously a “no-brainer”. You can see every single shirt in the drawer and they fit in there beautifully. This system gets 5 stars from me! I love that I can easily find what I am looking for without destroying the whole drawer of clothes. A must do for the organized person in your home!

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Life Hacks I Love: #1 Gift Wrap Storage

It seems as though we are constantly being bombarded with new terms and jargon. I often find it hard to follow my own kids’ conversations as some of the words they use are completely foreign to me.  One of the latest terms that is circulating on the internet is “life hacks”.

What is a “life hack”?

life hack

I often browse sites that share “life hacks”, as I am always on the lookout for new and creative ways to do life in a more efficient way. Here is one that I found, tried and modified to better suit my needs.

Gift Wrap Storage

I saw this great idea for gift wrap storage on Pinterest. This hack was both easy and cheap, but I wasn’t totally impressed with it when I tried it out. The concept is simple. Cut a toilet paper roll lengthwise and slide the cardboard over the gift wrap roll to keep it secure. Unfortunately, it takes very little for the cardboard toilet paper roll to become stretched and not have enough “spring” to hold the paper in place.

toilet paper roll

This gift wrap roll is fat, so it works okay, but I can tell that with only a few uses, it would be stretched out of shape and no longer stay in place.

I was really disappointed as I thought this was a great idea. So, I came up with an easy fix. All you need are regular brads and tiny hair elastics which can be bought at the dollar store. A bag of 100 is $1. (Lets hope you don’t need all 100 for gift wrap or you may have more serious problems than how to store it).

Punch 2 holes in the toilet paper roll, stick a brad in each and stretch the elastic across to hold it securely. The great thing about this is that you can modify it by cutting out a section of the roll to make it smaller to fit around those skinny rolls of paper as well. (Otherwise, the standard size roll actually overlaps and slides right off of it). It literally takes seconds to make these and they work really well.

Cut a slit down the toilet paper roll.
Tiny hair elastic, brads and toilet paper roll.
Use the elastic to secure the toilet paper roll.

Now, if you are like my husband you might be saying….”that is supposed to be better than a regular elastic?”  Check out this spoof video on some of the life hacks that are circulating on the web.  Funny.

Often times, some of the “life hacks” seem like they are way more work than they are really worth, but I like this one because I find that tape damages the paper and an elastic often ends up cutting the paper.  Of course, if you make several of them, you can re-use them over and over again.

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Repurposing Clothes Pins

Clothes pins have been around for what seems like forever, but with all of the “life hacks” trending on the web, people are now able to share their creative uses for a simple clothes pin. As a teacher, I have used clothes pins in my classroom for organizing children into groups, securing stacks of paper, learning games and much more.  The possibilities are really endless.  A few bloggers have already researched and collected many great clothes pin ideas. Check-out the list of more than 40 uses for the traditional wooden clothes pin or perhaps you’ll find some unexpected uses for them at Real Simple.  You may also want to check out this link on Pinterest for some great ideas.

Simple Steps for Enhancing a Clothes Pin:

  • Cut out long strips of scrapbooking paper (1 cm X about 8 cm)
  • Glue the strips onto the clothes pin with Modge Podge.
  • Let dry.
  • Trim the excess paper from the edges.
  • Distress the edges.  (I like to gently sand the edges to reveal the white paper below the printed surface.  Sometimes I leave the white edges and other times I will use a bit of ink to age it slightly.)
  • Modge Podge the surface and let dry completely.
  • Embellish with buttons, paper flowers, etc.

You can leave the clothes pins in their natural wooden state or you can play with stain or paint if you’d like to change the base colour.  I have even tried adding fabric to them and that works well too.  Below are a few fridge magnets that I made.  These can be done within a few minutes, but you do have to allow for drying time.  These would also make a great little gifts for a teacher, thank you, thinking of you or hostess..  There are so many awesome ideas for how to use clothes pins for both organization and to enhance your decor, so if you can learn how to dress them up, the options are endless.  Simple, cheap and functional.  I wonder if anyone actually uses clothes pins to hang clothes on the line in anymore?  I am so glad they haven’t yet become obsolete!

I embellished one of the clothes pins as an example of what you might do.
You can see that my pieces are the proper width, but the length is random and will be trimmed later.
Flip the clothes pin over and us an exacto knife to trim the extra paper.
Printed papers can be gently sanded to reveal the white paper below the surface for a distressed look.
Here are the finihshed clothes pins without any embellishments.

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