After weeks of obsessing over these copper handled wire baskets, from Target, I finally decided that I had to have them in my life. As always, my Pinterest board of a brain, wouldn't allow me to use them for their intended purpose, so I decided to turn them into storage shelves for my bathroom.
Hi everyone! It’s Mandi from Making Nice in the Midwest. When I was pregnant and putting together my daughter’s nursery, I found these wire basket crates at TJ Maxx and thought they would be the perfect containers for her beautiful stuffed animals and wooden toys. I envisioned them sitting prettily on our bookshelves after our daughter dutifully put all of her toys away after playing with them. Oh, the naivete of those days! These baskets soon became stuffed full of plastic toys in bright colors, and I wasn’t too happy with how cluttered our living room looked all of the time, even when the toys were put away!
I gave up on using these industrial baskets for toy storage, but I thought they would make perfect shelves for our bathroom. After adding a bit of inexpensive hardware, our bathroom became much more organized and homier looking. We’re so happy that our tiny bathroom has clean counters and a bit of personality now. I’ll show you what I did with the toys another day, but for now, read on to learn how you can easily hang wire baskets on your bathroom walls to make your life a bit more organized and beautiful!
You will need:
Step One: Hold your basket up to the wall with the bottom of it against the wall. Lay a level on top to make sure the basket is straight, then mark along an opening of the basket on either side so you know where to drill the holes.
Step Two: Use a drill bit slightly smaller than the wall anchors and drill into the holes you marked in step one.
Step Three: Hammer the wall anchors into the hole you drilled in step two.
Step Four: Put the basket back up to the wall where you measured in step one, and drill the screws into place with the washer behind the screw but in front of the basket. Keep them loose until you make sure the basket is level, then you can tighten it into place if you’d like.
My baskets aren’t exactly flat on the sides, so I was concerned about using them as shelves. Perpendicular sides would have been ideal, but because the sides of my wire baskets were only slightly angled, they worked out just fine! I had a 12×12″ frame with a matted photograph that I used in the back of the top basket for decoration, and then placed my homemade skincare products in front of the frame. I’ll probably add other lotions and things next to them as time goes on.
The top of the upper basket was perfect for stacking hand towels, and the top of the lower basket was great for holding a tea caddy filled with tea cups I’ve used to organize little things like bobby pins, eye cream, cotton balls, and cotton swabs. Toilet paper is easily within reach on the bottom basket, with my cosmetics bag chillin’ out alongside them.
Our bathroom looks so nice and organized now, I’m so pleased! I think this system will be easy to maintain because everything is in sight and easy to grab. Now I won’t have to do a mad dash to straighten up out bathroom when guests stop by!
–Mandi
Credits // Author and Photography: Mandi Johnson