Laundry Baskets

Most people think of laundry baskets and think of piles of dirty clothes that need to be sorted, washed, dried, folded and then put away.

Laundry baskets can be used in many other ways throughout your home. They come in a variety of sizes, shapes and colors. I'd like to share some ideas with you:

1. Keep small, shallow laundry baskets by the front door for each of your kids. They can put their backpacks, homework, gym clothes and lunch in there for the next morning. Having everything in one place eliminates lost articles and frantic searches the next morning.

2. You can use rectangular laundry baskets to store both books and DVDs. We own a lot of DVDs and we've always stored them in a blue laundry basket which can be moved from room to room or even out to the garage.

3. Keep a laundry basket in your trunk to hold the kids sport uniforms and backpacks. You can also put melons or juice bottles in the basket when grocery shopping to stop them from rolling around your trunk.

4. If you have a two story house, keep a small basket at the bottom of the stairs and fill it throughout the day with stuff that needs to go upstairs.

5. Coloring books, crayons and markers have a way of being all over the place and hard to find. Store the markers and crayons in small plastic containers and then store all of the containers in the larger laundry basket.

6. We have a lot of craft supplies. We have rubber stamps, scrapbooking supplies, beads and more. Once again, having several small plastic containers all in the larger container makes finding the supplies much easier.

7. We are not garage sale people so we keep a container out in the garage to collect our items we want to give away. When the basket gets full, we can load it into the trunk of the car and bring it to the donation center.

These are just a few alternate uses for your family's laundry baskets. How else do you use them?

Audrey :)