New Dining Room Basket

By the back door in our dining room was a small basket on the floor below the hooks. Before we had a baby, this was a perfect solution for quick access to outdoor things we might need - a bottle of sunscreen, bug spray, pruners, twine, scissors, a citronella candle, etc. It functioned well but didn't look very good, so I was always careful to conceal it in photos. Check out that well placed curtain in the right corner.

Then Oliver came along and we suddenly had 15 different types of sunscreen, little hats, toys, and a dozen different possible things he might need outside. And then Oliver became mobile and suddenly everything was dangerous or messy and this solution stopped working for us. We had to put stuff in bags on the hooks or pile it on the chair. It grew overwhelming, cluttered, messy. It was time for a change.

At Target I hit the decorative storage isle, mulling over all of their basket options. They have a lot of really great stuff over there, but I had to be picky. The space is narrow so I couldn’t get anything too wide. Most narrow options were too small. A hamper was too tall, but I loved the idea of a lid. I also didn’t want to spend much.

Then I saw it - these canvas Bento boxes from Rubbermaid. They are so cool! And they happened to be very on sale (sorry the sale is over now, but the price is still pretty darn good for how great these are). Inside you can adjust the liners in different ways to hold stuff! The material is a durable plastic canvas. There are lids available that double as trays - perfect.

I love how the liners inside create cubbies to organize our stuff. And the lid hides everything away, making it much less tempting for Oliver to want to unroll the twine again (and of course anything dangerous like pruners and scissors still reside elsewhere).

I can also stack things on top of the tray now too, which is great because let's face it - there are just way too many toys to corral. As much as I want to believe we're going to live with the box neatly tucked away in the corner forever, really it's going to look more like this all summer long:

We tend to rotate bath and pool toys to keep things fresh, but I like to store them inside so they stay clean. At least the pool/water table bucket can stack neatly on top of the box when the weather warms up.