When actual cold and snowy winter weather arrived a few weeks ago, Steven and I dug out our real winter gear. Since winter is generally pretty mild here most of the time, you might not think we’d have much, but from skiing/snowboard, and living in Boston for a year, we have a pretty big stockpile. And it made our entryway into a huge mess. My storage ladder helped, but it didn’t work for hats and big gloves. I was trying to figure out a good storage solution, and then I saw a bench with baskets on the underside. So I set out to come up with a bench storage hack for our entryway. It was surprisingly easy!
When I went for a stroll down the closet organization aisle at the hardware store, I quickly spotted a potential solution to our storage problem. These baskets looked like they’d be perfect, so I bought a few to try them out.
I just measured the underside of the bench and the baskets, did a little math to evenly space them, and screwed cup hooks in the bottom of the bench to hold them in place. The baskets already have loops on all four corners, so I just slipped them over the hooks, and that was it!
Well, almost. Two caveats: I discovered I needed to drill pilot holes for the cup hooks, otherwise they’d break off in the wood. Maybe the wood of my bench was particularly hard, but you should probably drill holes to be on the safe side (mark the cup hook screw length on the drill bit with a piece of tape, so you don’t drill through the top of the bench). And if I ever decide I don’t want them on the bench anymore, they’ll be easy to remove.
Also, if you click the link for the basket, you might think “But those are white, and yours are gold,” and you’d be right. That’s where gold spray paint comes in. After a bit of googling for the best gold spray paint, I bought a bottle of Design Master metallic spray paint in Gold Medal (also on Amazon), and gave my baskets a couple of coats so that they would match the brass legs on my bench. I had never used this brand, but I was really happy with it, and would definitely recommend it for a good metallic gold.
The bench is one we got a couple of years ago from West Elm, and it’s no longer available. If you don’t already have a bench you want to modify, you could build this one, which looks like it would work well for this hack. Ikea also has many options that might work. The main limitation is that you’ll want to use a bench that has a lip on the front edge, so that you can’t see the loops and cup hooks when you look at it from the front.
It’s still not quite as neat and tidy as I would like, so I may make or buy some bins to put in the wire to conceal the stuff. I’m thinking grey felt bins, maybe? I’ll be sure to share what I come up with!
