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THE RESULTS: These felt weirdly satisfying considering they took basically zero effort. Both hacks are actually as easy as they look. Clothes get heavy fast, though; if you stacked more than a few together, it would probably put too much ~pressure~ on the top hanger.
Of the two, the plastic chain's slightly more efficient, because you can easily grab a top from the middle of the stack without messing with the others. With the soda tabs, you'd have to unhook two hangers, then rehook the bottom hanger to the top one.
TOTAL COST: The soda tabs were essentially free — I pulled 'em off cans I was drinking. The two-foot plastic chain was just over $1 at Home Depot.
THE RESULTS: As appealing as the organized scarves with shower curtain rings look on Pinterest, they don't pass the IRL test. A better trick: Just loosely tie 'em all to the hanger itself — I show how I did it below.
TOTAL COST: Free! Assuming you have a spare "suit hanger" aka one with a triangle-shape (and not a "dress hanger," that has just the shoulders).
THE RESULTS: I L-O-V-E these two tricks! While they both do the job well, I slightly prefer the pipe cleaners — they're easy to slide to the *exact* spot where the clothes hit the hanger naturally.
TOTAL COST: The pack of pipe cleaners was $1 at Michael's. And I reused the rubber bands that Whole Foods puts on strawberry cartons.
THE RESULTS: I've been doing this for years, ever since a salesperson at the Container Store told me about it. It's the perfect lazy-person way to put them away too; you just drop them in when you take them out of your hair.
TOTAL COST: I got this holder in college, but if you don't have one to repurpose, get a similar one on Amazon for $3.17.
THE RESULTS: This is basically a game changer. My hair ties suddenly aren't in a precarious pile somewhere in my bathroom, or haphazardly hanging onto the piece of cardboard they came on. I can easily clip it or hang it wherever — to a bag, to a wire shelf, on a hook, whatever. And maybe, just maybe, the new pack I just bought won't disappear quite so quickly.
TOTAL COST: Free if you already have extra carabiners around. But I bought this pack of five on Amazon for $6.59.
THE RESULTS: It's cute AF. Much cuter than just using the little plastic lid it comes with. The blender fits in neatly without any risk of rolling out, a nice change from the plastic-lid balancing act.
TOTAL COST: I didn't own egg cups, so I picked some up on Amazon for $7.74.
THE RESULTS: The key to these is making sure they're really, truly twisted tightly enough. When you feel like they're tight and it looks like they're gonna stay up, tighten some more. And a little more. When I first put 'em in, one of them fell shortly after I put the weight of the shoes on them — but when I added *even more* tension until I could barely twist anymore, they stayed.
Of course, YMMV: It works for me and I think it's worth a try, but I can't make any promises. The paint or wallpaper on your walls, the weight of your shoes, and your definition of "truly twisted tightly enough" can all have an effect on how well the tension rods hold up!
TOTAL COST: Each shower curtain tension rod was $12.87 at the time I bought 'em, but right now they're marked $13.23. Two tension rods (for two levels of shoes, including the ground) would be $26.46, and four (for three levels, like I tried) would be $52.92.
You could try this with cheaper, smaller curtain rods (like these, $11.83 for two or $16.83 for four), but they may or may not stay up, depending on how many shoes you try to load on 'em.
THE RESULTS: This started off as a disappointment, for me — the lids for the pots I use most often are just a smidge too wide for the hooks. But I tried it with my skillet's lid, and it worked! First I hung just the two bottom hooks and saw that the pot lid tilted forward — which is why I added the top hook.
Unfortunately my kitchen cabinets are either tiny or weirdly shaped, too small to take advantage of the ~full potential~ of this hack. But one of our readers recently submitted a photo of their cabinets — below — which I think will give you a better idea of what you can do!
—heatherraec, from when we asked the BuzzFeed Community to show us how they organize small spaces.
TOTAL COST: Your cost will depend on how many lids you want to hang! A six-pack of the utility hooks is $3.39 on Amazon.