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Many of us can say we are a frugal budget in some form or fashion. Ever since my son was born, I’ve become extremely frugal by necessity. My husband and I always knew I wasn’t going back to work after baby, but I didn’t understand just how tight the budget would be. By the time he was 10 months old, my focus was on our budget 24/7; with everything from cooking to cleaning- making my own detergents and reusing containers.
Don’t get me wrong. I love to buy new, but there are plenty of times we just don’t need to and can save hundreds of dollars a year, even when you need to organize your stash or craft room. Here are some very simple ways that I was able to save quite a few dollars and make my tiny studio feel tidy, even when it has exploded.
Hit up your pantry!
Save your cereal boxes! This option is so flexible you could use it in the kitchen, your sock drawers, in a Kaboodle, even organize crayons or markers. I’ve cut the bottoms and tops off the boxes to use them in short corners. They hold anything from stitch markers to rubber bands. You can cut them lengthwise to use for hooks, scissors, and embroidery threads. A single drawer can hold several boxes or the bottoms of cereal boxes/hot tea boxes to keep all your little things separated. (We’ve recently moved so it isn’t prettied up yet, but it helps us feel at home and makes it much easier to locate things.)
Hit the Garage Sales!
My dad found a solid oak chest of drawers and matching dresser that well went with our current furniture set at a garage sale for only $50. He bought it for us, but I would have spent the money on it expecting my son will be using them when he is grown. For now, this set is where I store everything from key plates and weights to sketches and current works in progress. You can certainly find a chest of drawers for much less; especially if it’s made of particle board. Resale shops have them all the time.
Hit up the Dollar Store!
Even though many items are more than $1, you can still score some sweet deals. Three of the drawers in one of these large oak chests contain several small items that are easy to categorize. In this case, I use two utility dividers (as seen above) like those you would use for your silverware and cutlery. They were only $1 each and I felt super clever buying those to use for extra hooks, needles, pins, threads, tags, pens… whew!
A shoe organizer ($9 on sale) under a desk holds working skeins with test swatches and small wips. Plastic shoe boxes fit 2-3 skeins each. A large trash receptacle is a great place to keep hats and scarves going out as orders.
Keep large garden baskets to hold new skeins waiting to be organized in the closet.
Hanging sweater dividers ($5/ea) hold various skeins cued up for projects while large plastic bags ($3/ea) zip up several skeins to be stacked in a closet.
Hope this gives you some great ideas!
From the editors of StitchandUnwind:
If you’re looking for even more ideas to help reduce your craft related spending (or to reduce your t-shirt pile), give these alternative knitting materials a try. Not only are these recycled crafting ideas a great way to help the planet, you’ll save move and some are also a wonderful way to help local economies in other countries. You’ll be really surprised at all the great money saving projects in this collection: Recycled Craft Ideas: Silk, Ribbon and T-Shirt Yarn Projects.
Do you have any other frugal organizing tips? Share them below!
Celina Lane
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Thank you so much for featuring my tips! I love this blog and the many ideas everyone brings to the table.
I use a shelf I bought at Big Lots for around 40 including 2 fabric bins. It has 2 shelves and the 3rd is divided into 2 cubes to hold fabric bins perfectly. I already had some craft paint laying around and brightened it up with some shades of beautiful blues. My bins have a damask print and are perfect for holding my ball forms. Skeins all over the other 2 shelves. Baskets that I got from the dollar store in packs help hold my yarn for my current projects. In fact I sometimes put a knitting needle thru a basket and the needle stopper to keep them in the basket to feed my yarn. Army duffle holds everything that couldn’t fit and my old bookbags hold projects completed. I love some of these ideas. Especially the baskets on the wall. They could also hold ball forms great.
Oh yeah and I use a cosmetic bag to hold all my hooks scissors and Stitch markers etc. Makes traveling with a project so easy.
These are awesome ideas, especially for people on a budget! At home, we not only have a junk drawer but a junk closet filled with craft parts, wrapping paper, etc. So many of these ideas maximize space…I never would have thought cereal boxes could be so useful when itemizing a kitchen drawer. Great post!
I love the cereal box idea! My drawers are always a disaster area, no matter what I do. Actually, it’d be neat to get $1 acrylic paints and do some fun patterns on the inside of the boxes as a way to color code. Red pattern for thread, blue for needles, yellow for buttons…I’m not great at organizing, but for some reason I stick to color code systems. Thanks for these great ideas!
There’s also mac-tac paper, fabric, and decoupaging to decorate the inside of boxes or tops of lids or anything you use to store and organize things. I’ve also picked up end rolls of wallpaper for less than a dollar at various stores and have found there’s usually enough on the roll to cover several containers or boxes.
I use Margarine/Ice Cream Tubs for organising my drawers :D. Also for freezing portions of Beef Stews and Curries.
I also use empty ‘Tic Tac Boxes’ to store things like Knitting Bodkins, Press Fasteners, Hooks ‘n’ Eyes etc.
My travel Knitting/Crochet pouch is a child’s zip topped pencil case :D.
on city clean up I found a childs toy ben with 3 shelves and colored bens in 2 sizes I cleaned it up removed the screws put a drop of E6000 glue and replaced them. good for notions, patterns.zippers and etc. I found a 3 drawer chest with a drawer missing so I bought a cheap basket to replace used cardboard as the base.
Empty baby food bottles are great for holding items like pins, tacks, stitch markers, paper clips, nails, staples, etc. The labels can be removed so you can see the contents easily and the tops can be painted or covered with fabric to make them prettier.
Larger bottles can be used to store items as well – hooks, needles, bobbins, measuring tapes, buttons, etc. Whatever will fit in them.
Bottles can be stacked on shelves or in drawers or placed in racks of all sorts. You can also make a magnetic holder by gluing magnets to the lids and tacking up a strip or sheet of sheet metal to keep them organized. Just make sure the tops are fastened tightly.
Rolls of wrapping paper can be kept organized with an umbrella stand. Empty rolls (from wrapping paper, paper towels, and toilet paper) can be used for a variety of purposes from cutting them down to organize markers/pens/paint brushes, etc to using them as the centers for winding yarn balls.
A paper towel holder can hold the balls of yarn from above or reels of ribbons.
Practically everything can be recycled if you think outside the box and can be decorated to use up some of your scrap pieces of materials to fit with your decor. You can keep your entire house organized by recycling.
I clean labels off medicine bottles and use them to hold bits and pieces ie beads, bells, table scatter glitter (Lg shapes like its a boy, Angels, Easter eggs etc ). I take one of whatever is in the bottle and place a blob of hot glue on lid and secure item in it. I stand them up in a drawer and easily find what I’m looking for in a glance. They are also great to hold yarn needles, stitch markers.
I have a hanging zip bag that pillowcases came in that I keep accessories in. It is large enough for hooks, stitch holders, tape measure, scissors, mechanical pencil, small notebook, gauge measurer etc.
An old fashioned two piece toothbrush holder is great for holding double pointed needles and I keep my grandmothersnd mom”s silver crochet hooks in one.
After school starts and they put pencil boxes on sale I’ve bought many of them to hold other stuff like stamps and card making supplies, scrap booking stickers and cutouts, quilling supplies etc.
I buy those Pirouline cookies and when the cans are empty I use them to store my crochet hooks in. I also save jars, they are grest for storing buttons in. I also use them for small nails and screws. Plastic chewing gum containers are good for using on my vanity table for eye pencils and when traveling they can be used to brng cotton balls, earrings and other small items. Now I learned about uses for boxes. Thank you for the good ideas.
I store my crochet hooks in a clear zip-lock snack bag. I can see through the plastic to the size hook I need.
I purchase inexpensive zippered sweater bags to coordinate my yarns for storage and place them in the large 3 draw bins that come with rollers. Some bins can be stacked onto each other by removing the rollers on some and only using the rollers on the bottom bin, or some are sold without rollers for stacking. This works well and keeps all your yarn clean and organized in one place. I also save the zippered bags that curtains come in to store my yarn and finished projects in. Larger zip lock bags work well too. If your looking for a way to stand up a pull skein of yarn while working with it, try using an empty clean large oatmeal can. Just place the skein of yarn in the container and place it on the floor next to your favorite chair or couch and it works great and keeps the yarn off the floor.
I use toothbrush travel holders to organize my double pointed sock needles. I write each size on them.
Oh wow, these are all excellent ideas! And they look so nice, too!
Especially because my current organization method can be summed up as ‘throw it in a bag, come back to it later’. Now if only I could figure out something for all my scrap fabric…
,Just the article I have been watching for–a way to keep yarn & needles handy for someone to have handy so I don’t need to bend over to reach. I have lots of grandchildren & great grand children & believe me they love knitted things.—headbands-hats & mittens. I will be 89 this Dec—but I like to keep busy. Thanks again
My Dad used a screw n washer to fix clean jar lids to the bottom of shelves. He filled the clean jars with screws etc. I fill them with buttons, fasteners, needles–anything small or that fits in the jar.
I would love to have more info on knitting with the rag strips, if possible. My friend recently moved to Nova Scotia, her home is on the ocean front, I would love to knit her a throw of some kind for a present.
My husband was weary of my supplies laying all around so he went and invested in several different sizes of plastic bins. i then organized my projects and put all the yarn, the pattern and any other items i needed into a bin. i then labled the outside with the project name. it has been great
frugality is certainly subjective! Some of the ideas people have are, indeed, wonderful uses for things they already have, but to be buying some of those things on a regular basis indicates to me that their “frugal” is of a richer sort than I can ever reach. Recycling whatever you have for whatever your need is really the best-and you get rid of some of the stuff that might be laying around! Thanks for sharing, everyone.
When I buy anything that comes in the plastic ( vinyl) holder’s, I save them,no matter how big or little. I’ve got thread,yarn,and even papers stored in the plastic or vinyl bags.
these ideas are all wonderful but was wondering if anyone has suggestions on how to store circular knitting needles
Store circular needles in cookie tins, butter cookies from Aldi’s work great for this( bonus you get to eat the cookies!) Also this time of year a lot of dollar stores and the evil that is walmart have christmas tins on clearance.