Vacation Home Straightening

This vacation home on the coast of Maine has hosted generations of the same family and has enough dinnerware to serve dozens. As you can see, the shelves are overflowing. There was no rhyme or reason to what each one held. Gorgeous blue and white china was scattered throughout all the shelves

Because the home is jointly owned by several family members, I was not allowed to toss anything so I simply follwed the  "like with like" rule to clean it up.  See how pleasing it looks with the blue and white china clustered into a focal point on the top shelf? Total straightening time: 40 minutes.

rePURPOSING Things: Gold Jewelry

Some inherited jewelry is gorgeous; you may have coveted it for years. Others you would not be caught dead wearing. You can keep the memory of the giver alive by rePURPOSING what you won't wear into a new piece of jewelry you will wear.

This thick gold bangle bracelet was made from a set of thin, dented ones. It gets lots of compliments and the wearer can tell the story of how it come into being.

The Hanger Trick

The hanger trick is not original but it is so wonderful I want everyone to know about. It is so cool that I hope it inspires you to clean out your clothes closets right now!

After you remove everything from your closet and decide what clothes you want to keep, hang them back in the closet the "wrong"way, with the hanger hook facing forward. When you return something to the closet after you have worn it hang it in the "right" way, with the hook facing the back of the closet.

At the end of the season it is easy to see which clothes to discard - the ones with the wrong way hangers, the ones that had never been worn.

If you want to gain some extra hanging space, try this with your coat closet. Coats are bulky and take up a lot of room and you'll get some space by removing just two. But I am a little more lenient when it comes to discarding coats. They tend to be expensive and you don't want to make a mistake tossing a fabulous raincoat you didn't wear one year because it rained less than the year before.  So I have a longer time line for coats: the ones on backwards hooks at the end of the second winter get donated.

Kid's Art Gallery and Storage

We want our kids to be creative and proudly display their art work but we may not want it to take over the house. Sometimes sheer quantities turn their art into visual clutter.  And then there is the issue of what to do with each masterpiece when it time to replace or remove it.  It's hard to throw out the first dinosaur drawing they ever did.

Inexpensive acrylic box frames are your answer ($3.99 at Target). Just pop new art into the acrylic display box and rotate the older piece out, storing it inside the paperboard box support. So simple even your child could it. Now you have a neat little family art gallery.