Style N Season: Frugal Organizing: Tins N Cans

No outfit post today, Ladies! Instead, let's talk today about frugal organization. I love this topic, and I have read a lot of blog posts and watched a lot of YouTube videos to inspire and motivate me. I hope this little, humble post might give you some ideas, too on how to get more organized at home. If not, well, let's just say this is just a sharing, because I'm sure there a lot of readers who are much much much better organizer and homemaker than me! ^__^

Getting organized has never been easier – or fun – for women than it is today. Think about it. We have tons of products that can help us to get organized on daily basis: agenda, Filofax, various containers in any shape and color and model that you can think of, colorful highlighters, stickers, sticky notes, color-coded pens, smartphones… Practically in every store we can find pretty tool boxes, shower buckets, make up traincases, lovely pouches in various materials and patterns. The list go on and on.

Yet the massive amount of products can backfire. Instead of helping us, they are hindering us, getting us confused. Too many options is just as frustrating as no options at all. Almost. Instead of assisting us to get down and get dirty and really getting organized, they fool us with wishful thinking: “If I buy this pink container, this cute agenda, all these highlighters and stickers, and if I watch all these YouTube videos and read all these blogs of organizing, then I’ll get organized in the end.”

Well, Ladies, as tempting that thought might be, and as useful and nice having all those tools in our arsenal, we will NEVER get organized if we don’t start DOING it for real. Good planning is half way there. But not there yet. We need good actions, too.

As much as I’m fond of those delightful-looking containers and organizers in all those cheerful colors, I’m even more fond of practicality and frugality. I’ve been known to use everyday things that I can find around the house to store and organize things. My coworkers call me Mrs. Salvage for always salvaging used tins and cans and jars. ^__^

For example. Every year, I receive Christmas parcels gifts with goodies in pretty tins and cans and containers. I use them to hoard sugar, tea, coffee and snacks at my home. At the end of the year, when the tins have started to rust and oxidized, I just threw them out to the recycled trash bins and change them with new ones from the new Christmas parcel gifts. My office received plenty of those every year and it seems like nobody wants the containers but this gal right here. I will share how I use those at the end of this post.

I believe in recycling and reducing our consumption instead of substituting. I live in the tropics where they grow palms to make palm oil. The eco-friendly cars that Hollywood stars promote? You think they are really that eco-friendly? Well, big corporations have been chopping downs thousands of acres of trees in the jungle (not woods, in the tropics it’s called jungle, for real) to make palm plantation. Use woods instead of plastic? They sell it with more expensive price and chopping down trees to make the “green” wood products. So yeah, reduce and recycle. If you substitute, do think about the implication it might cause.

So this is what I place at one corner of my dining room. It's a two tier basket that was used as a parcel basket that my office received several years ago. Nowadays, I use it as a multi-tier portable rack to store goods like cofees, sugar, teas, honey, etc. I even hang my bottle cleaner and sometimes some bananas on the curvy wire. I like the fact that it has two layers and open so you can stack a lot of things and you can see everything all at once. Very convenient.

These cookie jars are made of thick cardboard boxes and tin lids. I used them to hoard my husband's ready-to-drink cofee sachets (with no lid, for easy access), and sugar (with closed lid). I love the mustard and teal green colors! Last year we used real tin cans, but they have become dirty, so I replace them with these for another year.

In the pink flowery tin I keep all my fancy tea bags, The tin came with gingersnaps and it's so pretty I just couldn't throw it away after my coworkers finished off the cookies!

I store already-opened formula for my child in this giant cookie-tin. I bought the formula in one-kilogram packages, so it's huge and needs a big container. I don't want to spend money on yet another container. This cookie tin does nicely and I love the pictures on the sides. My son loves it too, he loves to bang on it with his hands and make "music"! Haha!

This electric blue cardboard box with fancy, magnetized lid came with cookies inside a plastic package. I gave the cookies to share among coworkers and brought home the box because nobody wanted it. Then I realized that the tissue box at my dining room was broken and I have not replaced it, so this is what I did...

Voila! No need to get a new tissue box at the store!

Yet another blue and red cookie tins that are now housing some of my condiments that came in sachets.

Some of my container collections for pantry, kitchen and dining room, packed neatly in the dining room cupboard. I don't think I bought any of them. I got them free when I bought cookies, or cheese, or coffees. The chocolate brown with double yellow lids are my favorites because the shape represent cookies with chocolate filling. They are so cute and yummy looking, not to mention, very useful! I have another collection of pretty boxes for make up and jewelry, but it's for another post! ^__^

I'm linking up to these wonderful Ladies:

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Macdonald's Playland: Mommy Moments Blog Hop
Watch Out For the Woestman: Watch What I'm Wearing

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Monday, March 24, 2014

Frugal Organizing: Tins N Cans

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