Do you have old baskets hanging around the house or attic that you're thinking about putting in the yard sale or even in the garbage?
Stop!
You can redecorate those baskets and turn them into useful and attractive storage items. Redecorating the baskets is easy, and they can help make use of wasted space for storage, giving you more room to keep other bathroom items in your cabinets.
Maybe you have some old shelves from yard sale or a previous use in another room. Pick a piece of empty wall space in your bathroom and gear up that creative mind.
Of course, you will probably need to re-paint the shelves before using them. You can choose many different types of paint, including metallics, spray paints, or even stone effects. Just make sure to choose one which will sand up to moisture. If the shelves are damaged, chipped, etc, you may need to sand first, then apply several coats of paint to give a tough, long-lasting surface. After the shelves are dry, give them a good look over and consider - are they too plain or do you want to add something more to them? Stencils, stamps, stripes, transfers, wallpaper borders or stickers can all be used to decorate plain shelves. Just don’t overdo it with too many doo-dads. When choosing your colors and shades, be sure they combine well with your existing bathroom color scheme, either matching, toning or contrasting.
Once the shelves are good and dry, mount them on your wall where you need them. You may want to line them up with existing wall features like windows, doors or cabinets, or to deliberately not make them line up to disguise existing uneven-ness. If you have more than one shelf, you can line them up vertically or horizontally, or stagger them. Make sure that your mounting method is string enough to take the weight of the shelf and of the things you plan to store on it!
Now you have created extra storage and display space, and you need to arrange it in an attractive way. Here again you can be creative using baskets and other containers on the shelves, stacking towels and washcloths in color arrangements, and including small pictures and flower vases. Baskets come in many different sizes, shapes and colors, and you can spray paint them to match or contrast with each other, the shelves and the walls. Baskets made from natural materials are nice to use because they are easy to clean, just wash them with warm soapy water and let them air dry. The moisture in the bathroom is good for them, it helps keep them from drying out. Seagrass baskets have a particularly attractive natural scent of their own.
Make your wall storage system something for people to admire, and be proud of all the hard work you’ve put into it.
