Vintage Remix: Refrigerator Crisper Drawers

A little over a year ago I found these defunct refrigerator crisper drawers at Unique. The photo above is their current incarnation — keeping towels organized in our tiny linen closet.

But they’ve also served as handy root vegetable storage.

And as a way to class up keeping your liquor bottles on top of the fridge!

I find these bins at estate sales all the time. It seems like old couples bought new fridges in the ’70s or ’80s but the men wanted to keep the crisper bins for tool storage in their basement workshop (because that’s where I inevitably find them).

They make nice planters, too!

Vintage Remix: Metal Vertical File

I came across a few of these metal vertical files at a sale and found a pretty genius use for them that has nothing to do with keeping paperwork straight.

Use it to keep your bakeware accessible and organized.

Cookie sheets, muffin tins, pizza stone, cooling rack… and serving trays as well.

This one is available for $29 from Hindsvik, on Etsy.

Vintage Remix: Coat Rack

Maybe you’re lucky enough to have a coat closet and so you have no need for a coat rack.  Or do you?

At least once a day I find myself in my bedroom, holding an article of clothing that’s not dirty, but not clean, either:  a sweater I wore around the house for a few hours on Saturday, or a wool skirt I wore to work but don’t need to dry clean just yet.

I end up throwing it on the bench near our closet.  Jem does the same thing.  I don’t know

This little bench is never this clean — it’s always covered with clean-dirty clothes.

I know I’m not the only one with this problem.  And yet I refuse to admit it to myself.  I live my life as if there are only two stations of clothing: clean (and hung up neatly in the closet), and dirty (in the laundry basket).  This creates a perpetual no-mans-land for the items I don’t need to wash but am too lazy or busy to re-hang at the moment.

So why not stop kidding yourself an invest in a coat rack for these items?  Either a wall-mounted rack or a stand up one like the one pictured.

Okay — so tell me, am I crazy, or do you have this same problem?

Vintage Remix: Mail Slot Magazine Organizer

mail slots, originally uploaded by back_garage.

I’m still in love with this idea from Missy and Kirk’s Ukrainian Village apartment. Who doesn’t need a creative and elegant way to store old magazines and catalogs?