As I mentioned before, moving to a new house always has its challenges. In addition to finding new spots for our ocean of toys, I’ve also had to come up with a new solution for our mudroom. In our new house, the entryway from the garage is a small mudroom/laundry room. It’s only about 5 feet wide and the washer and dryer take up a significant portion of the width. I needed a place to store backpacks, keys, jackets, purses, and other ‘out the door’ essentials without interrupting the traffic flow.

As I was wandering the aisles of Target searching for a cheap solution, I came across these awesome peg boards. Yet another successful Pottery Barn knockoff from our friends at Target, these square peg boards are a perfect solution for tight spaces. In addition to the cool peg boards, they also offer coordinating dry erase boards and cork boards to allow for tons of configuration options. But of course, the best part is the customization. Much like their garage wall predecessors, these peg boards offer tons of flexiblity. Target sells a wide variety of hooks, boxes, racks and clips to help you create a perfect spot for all your must-haves.

On our board, I’ve got several small silver key hooks, a few sturdier hooks for my purse, a box for things like sunglasses and sunscreen, and a 4-arm swinging hook for the kid’s backpacks and jackets. At first, the hooks seemed a little loose and tended to pop out if I pulled at the wrong angle. I solved that problem by picking up a pack of ticky tack and placing a small dot of it around the peg of each hook. Now everything stays in its place and can the hooks can stand up to my kid’s toughest yanks.

In addition to mud rooms like mine, they’d be a great addition to any kid’s rooms, garages, craft areas and much more. We’ve used the system for a few months now, and it’s held up beautifully. The total set up cost me around $35. Considering I haven’t lost my keys or tripped over a backpack yet, I’d say it’s well worth the price. Just thought I’d pass it on.

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To survive as a parent, you have to be able to multi-task. Unfortunately, your car does as well. All too often my kids end up finishing their breakfast on the way to school, eating lunch on the way to soccer or munching a snack on the way to church.

To help my car survive the many mini-meals, I came up with this easy solution. I removed the label from an empty Crystal Light tube and stuffed it full of plastic grocery sacks. Whenever I start to see the mess accumulating or when I’m getting gas and have a trash can handy, I just reach under the driver’s seat and grab a sack from the tube. I pass it back to the kids and they dig around the car for any potential trash. The tube can hold around 10 sacks, so I rarely have to worry about refilling it. As a bonus, they also come in handy for stops at the mailbox and trips home from the pool in the summer.

To help prevent the tube from rolling around, I made another tube for napkins/paper towels and used two large rubber bands to hold them together. The rubber bands grip the carpet a little and help keep the tubes right under my seat. I’m sure there are tons of other ways you could use them as well, loose change, coloring pages & crayons, wet wipes, etc. It’s a simple, free, solution that has tons of potential. Just thought I’d pass it on.

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