Bins Under The Coat Cubby

Pretend you hear a little dinner bell as my butler Mr. French announces that "organization is served".

Do you remember Mr. French?  Probably only if you were watching TV in the 60's like me.


Take cheap plastic bins.....

Silver galvanized spray paint.....

Cedar roof shakes.....

Metal eyelets.....

And some craft wire.

If you put all those items in a jar, shook 'em up and rolled them out on the table, you would get some of these....

4 bins painted to look like metal with wood tags attached to each.... in case anyone actually wanted to use the bin that corresponded to their coat cubby and birth order.

I started with brown plastic bins.  I wanted silver, but brown was the color stocked on the store shelves the day I was there.

I gave them two coats of spray paint.

Some beautiful bins that fit perfectly into the little cubby under each of the four coat nooks would have been nice, but the ones I liked were over $20 dollars each and I wasn't willing to have this little organization project cost $80 buckaroos for bins.

I already had everything except the bins themselves.

The cedar shakes were lined up in a disorderly fashion, just the way you would expect someone to line them up who uses beer cans as risers.

I painted on Maison Blanche in Wrought Iron, with an undercoat of Ivory as the base for the letters.  Last they received a light sanding with a thin coat of dark wax which gives them an aged look.

I also made a sign for the dog cubby.  Yes, Moses has a cubby.  It's a base cabinet with no door and an old pillow for a bed.  He is sleeping there as I type this.

Offspring numbers 4, 5, and 6 still live at home so they received bins and I had one extra, sort of like an anything goes bin of miscellaneous stuff I might feel like tossing inside it.

Small holes were drilled through the cedar shakes on each end of the signs and I glued in a small silver eyelet to give them a finished look.

It's hard to get decent photos in my mud room.  A few weeks ago I showed you the bench area.....

The coat cubbies are directly across from the bench and the baskets above both have either a number or letter from a vintage metal tag, that relates to the owner of the bin/cubby.  The three oldest still each have a basket that I use to collect stuff they leave here.

The top baskets hold winter items like hats, gloves and mittens, the bottom bins have the change of season for footwear - sandals and over flow shoes that are not worn as often.

 

 As you can see #6 kid isn't home, his coat is missing, but he seems to have plenty of shoes for his feet.

And now his shoes have a bin to keep them corralled.   Things do tend to walk off themselves around here.