Monday Motivation - Transforming Ugly Storage

I was motivated by a comment on my first Monday Motivation post about ugly storage solutions.  Often times innovative and cheap free storage solutions are pretty ugly.  I have a super ugly free storage solution for my cat food in my kitchen - a rinsed out empty litter bin. 

I decided to go with the simplest and fastest solution available to me today.  I took some of the spray paint I recently got and spray painted the bin straw flower   yellow.  It took four coats of spray paint to cover the bin, but the end result is OK for now.  I may try to add a pattern to it with the left over colors of paint from my canvas project when I have time.

The bottom line is that for $3.87 I was able to make it look like a cute yellow container versus a old litter container.

Monday Motivation

On New Year's Eve I was over our friends house and saw a shelving unit in her children's playroom that made me go ooooooohhhhhh! I was immediately inspired to organize my room of shame. The shelving system was from Ikea and although it was designed to be storage for children it is perfect for my craft room.  Then the next day I got this article in my email  Better Homes and Gardens - tips for organization room by room.  While the rooms didn't include an office, craft, or hobby room alot of the tips are applicable. 



TROFAST storage (credit http://www.ikea.com/)

 So now thoroughly motivated, I dragged poor Ben (husband of 5 years) out and then spent hours and hours in Ikea. I will say that I had some extra cash so I was able to get 5 of the shelving units which gave me 5 shelves and 27 bins worth of storage for a cool $313.  Now if you have to purchase organization that is not to bad as far as cost goes.  By the by.... the other storage I had in the room which didn't hold all my things that well and I had slowly purchased on what I thought what was the cheap over the years actually had cost me  $518.21!!!  Not to name names, but this system was from a large chain with a distinct red circular logo.  (Lest you think me wasteful it is bring re-purposed in other room closets for storage.  Now that I added it up and know how much in total it cost it's getting used until it falls apart.)



Drawer Storage - jeanettes.typepad.com

 If you do not have the extra money lying around, however, and you already have plastic storage units I would recommend using the bins you already have to save money. Another out of the box, cost-saving storage unit is using bookshelves purchased from yard sales, flea markets, Craig's list, or even better free on http://www.freecycle.org/ and utilizing extra boxes and baskets as the organization bins.  (The dollar store does have small plastic craft organizers and baskets.) 

Does anyone else have any out of the box storage ideas? (Comments and ideas welcome!)