It is safe to say that almost everyone suffers from storage issues – we never have enough space for our things (whether they are worthy of hording storing or not!).

Already I’ve shared my love for using recycled items in my home in a recent post; I did however overlook the variety of recycled storage solutions I have collected over the years. I found these items in the most unlikely places, and thought it time I shared them with you:

• 2  wooden boxes, stumbled across whilst buying wine.
• A metal trunk, found whilst buying a peacock feather (not a common purchase of mine!)
• 2 chest of drawers, uncovered during a fossick in Mum and Dad’s garage.

Starting with my favourite find – these gorgeous French wine boxes were stacked up outside a bottleshop. They were selling them for $10 each – I had to have two! Whilst they are not perfectly constructed, sanded and painted… they have character, a story and serve their purpose perfectly – to store our DVD collection!

If you want to get your hands on some yourself make a visit to a bottle shop that is likely to sell French wine… and if you ask really nicely, you might even get them for zip!

My next find was this old metal trunk. I had looked for something to store our firewood for some time, and stumbled across this in an antique/junk shop. I was lured into this shop by a vase of peacock feathers spotted by my niece. Whilst she was choosing her feather, I spied this metal trunk (it’s perfect for storing firewood because it locks the spiders in!).

The next two (more traditional) storage items required a little bit of work to get to their current presentation state … they were covered in dust at the back of Mum and Dad’s garage. One required work stripping the paint off (another exhausting 4-layer stripping job), whilst the other required painting (it was a very average stained pine finish). After completing the work I ended up with two great chest of drawers, with very different looks.

I did hunt around to change the handles on the drawers I stripped, I found these black metal handles in a shop in Swan Street, Richmond.

As you can see I have ‘found’ myself multiple storage solutions without entering a furniture store, and had some exhausting days stripping and painting fun along the way.

Bernice