Give Everything a Beautiful Place

“Clear your desk of old keys, coins and Rubber bands, and keep them elegantly out of sight.” This tip from In Style’s January 2009 “Extra Splash In a Flash” is MADE for Classics. To everything a place and everything in its place … WITH LIDS. But, mainly, I think I just like the gold factor.

First, using beautiful boxes might seem like an obvious thing to do, but you’d be surprised how many people re-use ugly or disposable things. Like a certain Classic Freedom we know who is storing things on top of his dresser in leftover plastic top from a take-out food container (in his defense his cleaning lady implemented this solution.) Classic Structures and Fun Structures are the ones most likely thinking “What’s wrong with reusing a plastic lid?” But, aesthetics do matter to everyone else even if we haven’t done anything about it yet.

Funs and Organic Structures will probably jive with this beautiful box solution. But the Organic Structures need to be careful that the lid doesn’t make stuff inside disappear. Funs are like Classics and prefer to have things squirreled away in specific homes and remember precisely where things are even if they are out of site.

Smart Structures could use these beautiful boxes as well. But, the same warning above applies for Smarts as for Organic Structures. One idea might be to put an attractive label on the outside of a lidded bin if there’s more than one Organic or Smart in the house who might need to use what’s inside, i.e., if they don’t know what’s in the boxes, they’re not likely to search for safety pins in some mini box with a lid. In general, boxes without lids are better solutions for Organics and Smarts.

Originally published April 21, 2010