Over the many years I organized with clients, I found that most of the time, they would have the organizing items in their home We would usually find them in closets, in the garage, basement, or attic spaces and they wouldn’t need to buy a thing to get the room organized. Most of the time, it was because they tried to get organized before but never got to the point where they put the space back together. As a result, these items were either not used or used for miscellaneous items. From this, I found it wasn’t necessary to spend a lot of money to organize a room. You just need to get a little creative. Here are my tips on cheap items for organizing your next project. Many of these products don’t even require you to buy a thing! Let’s begin.
10 Cheap organizing products to use for organizing
1st Cheap Organizing Item: Old Mason Jars – You can buy these items at yard sales, flea markets or at craft stores. They run about a dollar a piece or less depending on the size.
2nd Cheap Organizing Item: Reusable food containers – Clean the food containers out well. Use hot water to help sterilize them. Some containers can not be washed in the dishwasher, so your best bet is to wash them by hand.
3rd Cheap Organizing Item: Empty toilet paper rolls and paper towels cut to store cloth napkins – You can use toilet paper rolls by cutting the long ways and then wrapping them around items like items you want to keep together.
4th Cheap Organizing Item: Reusable shopping bag – You can use these grocery bags for storing various clothes for cleaning or other bags for storage.
5th Cheap Organizing Item: Reusable paper bags – You can use the paper bags to pick up the dogs waste. These are great to organize your kids’ pencils and crayons.
6th Cheap Organizing Item: Dollar store containers – The Dollar stores have lots of drawer organizers and bins with dividers in them that are durable and useful for under cabinets as well.
7th Cheap Organizing Item: Inherited decorative boxes with lids – You know those decorative boxes that your loved one gave you before they passed. Use them to hold your hair accessories.
8th Cheap Organizing Item: Re-purpose old office binders to manage your recipes – Binders aren’t just for offices anymore. Binders can be used for recipes and coupons to help you stay on track with managing your healthy eating.
9th Cheap Organizing Item: Plastic trash cans – Use trash cans to hold car wash supplies in your garage. Then, when you want to wash the vehicle, you can also use the trash can to hold water.
10th Cheap Organizing Item: Older Trunks can store different linens or books. – Those old trucks that were hand-me-downs can be used to store your children’s books or toys.
I hope this goes to show you that by being a little creative, it will surely pay off. Remember, you do not need to have magazine picture perfect expensive organizing products to get organized. You just need a little creativity and a bit of time to get your home organized. Let’s continue the conversation, what is your favorite product to use that cost you little to nothing? What you used that was re-purposed while organizing? Please share your comment below. I would love to hear from you.
Note: the images above are also from Amazon. If you wish to buy them, please note that I will receive an affiliate fee that will not increase your cost what so ever. So, feel free to buy these items if you wish.
I totally agree with this. I can almost always scrounge around find some supplies that can be used to add structure to drawers or cabinets. I use those trash cans for wrapping paper storage (holds the tall rolls well.) The other trick is used cookie trays (e.g. Oreos or something like that.) They are typically quite shallow, and help organizer very shallow drawers. Great post!
Great idea, Seana. Trash cans are awesome to hold long items. I find that the straighter the sides of the trash cans the better items hold in them. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I love some of these products. I’ve even got a few reviews on the blog for rubbermaid. Thanks for sharing your picks.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I know what you mean about clients often having lots of great organizing products from the attempts to get organized. Some are working well for them and others they just haven’t found the right uses for yet. But using what’s available is a great starting point. And as you said, you can also repurpose inexpensive items to help organize. In a pinch I’ve used small gift boxes (separting the lids and bottoms) as drawer organizers. I’ve also used the boxes from Ziplock storage bags by cutting off the top so that it creates an open box. Those are also great for drawer or cabinet organizing.
One of the things I love most about organizing and the creativity that goes along with finding intersting uses for traditional and not so tradtitional organizing products.
Thanks for commenting, Linda. I wish others who are on the fence about organizing their space, would see the other benefits that come along with organizing.
Right now I’m trying to use toilet paper rolls to organize the charger cords for our different devices. Not sure how well it will work, but it’s encouraging to see you do recommend them for organizing!
I am doing the same thing, Janet. Still collecting all the toilet paper rolls I need to fill up a shoe box. Hopefully, it will work for all the smaller cables my husband collects. Keep me posted. =)