A really simple way to add some elegance and streamline your home…decorative containers for everyday things.  Manufacturers of all the stuff we use everyday go out of their way to make their product stand out so you’ll notice it and possibly choose to buy it. The result is generally packaging built for attention, not necessarily for aesthetics.

 But do you need to clutter up your home with all that?  You have to have soap and dish detergent, cleaners, shampoo, lotion, etc, but you aren’t limited to living with ugly plastic bottles that clash with your decor or hiding them away where they are inconvenient to use.

We’ve been on a kick to buy those products in bulk or in eco-friendly packaging and transfer them to containers that fit the aesthetic of the space where we use them.  This, it turns out, is better for the planet (less packaging to recycle) and waaaay prettier to live with!

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Here are some of the places we suggest considering some decorative containers:

Bathrooms

What if your shower did not shout at you first thing in the morning with a cacophony of clashing colors, shapes, and typefaces?  What if, instead, the body wash, shampoo, and conditioner were all in pretty matching bottles that actually complimented the tile and niche you worked so hard to select?  

You can choose clear bottles to keep tabs on the amounts left, or opaque ones, if, for example, you don’t want to see the color of the shampoo or body wash. And speaking of which…what possible benefit does neon green have to a soap product? unless you WANT to feel like you are washing with some radioactive substance…

I love these bottles with the words in large print…large type has become more and more important with each passing year, especially in the shower where I’m not wearing glasses! If you buy bulk quantities of shampoo and conditioner and liquid soap, you can use it to keep refilling these - and have way less plastic to throw away!

I like this typeface and the square shape of these, but there are a zillion options to choose from! (click on image for link)

These bottles offer customizable options. Choose white, black, or amber bottles, and the the color, font, and exact wording of your text .

We’ve been putting lotion and soap in glass bottles in our bathrooms.  And storing things like makeup brushes or toothbrushes and paste in a pretty mug or pitcher is a nice way to elevate the everyday.

We store cotton balls and Q-tips in decorative glass containers too!

We found all these at Home Goods, but similar ones can be found here: soap/lotion dispensers and apothecary jars with lids

Laundry

We keep our oxi-clean powder in a clear glass jar, and our concentrated liquid detergent in a refillable bottle.  Prettier, calmer, AND we can easily see when we are getting low! Clothespins to hang line-dry items, and dryer balls get stored in metal tins or baskets on the open shelving for easy access.

Kitchen

Obviously, a LOT of things can be stored in pretty containers in the kitchen.  Kitchen canisters have been a thing for decades, and ours have always held a steady supply of Irish Breakfast Tea and decaf black tea. I get very cranky if I run out of Irish Breakfast Tea.  Yes, I’m addicted. 

The other types of tea that we’ve bought are stored in these tin canisters and stick with magnets to a metal lined cabinet wall.  This ridiculous 9” wide cabinet is useless for most things, so this was the diva’s brilliant idea for easy access to her tea collection. I’m mostly content with my Barry’s Irish Breakfast Tea, but I venture in here once in a while for some Paris or Boston flavors. I don’t understand the appeal of Chamomile…it tastes a bit like stewed grass clippings to me, but to each his own?!

For easy access, we store our salt on the counter in a pretty and handy marble salt cellar with a swiveling lid (click on image for link), our olive oil in a bottle with a pour spout, and our slab of beloved Kerrygold butter in a pretty butter dish that can move from kitchen to table as needed.

Our baking staples live in big apothecary jars on the counter and little apothecary jars in the glass doored cabinet above the baking counter.

If you followed our whirlwind food organizing binge, you know we bought a gazillion of these fabulous containers (click here for link) and streamlined all our food storage in our pantry, refrigerator and freezer. 

Spices we tend to buy in bags or pouches and load into jars which we store on these vertical pullout racks installed in one of our upper cabinets. I LOVE these spice racks - no more avalanches of stacked bottles or spices lost in the dark recesses of the back of the cabinet somewhere behind the cocoa powder and red food coloring…(click on image for link)

If you have a set of spices that always get used together, these Masala Dabba spice tins are perfect (click on images for links), you only need to open one lid and everything is right at your fingertips! 

The diva likes to cook various Asian and Indian dishes, and these are the spices she uses.  I have no idea what some of these are, but aren’t they pretty?

We also store our kitchen soap and dishwashing detergent in refillable pump dispensers and our kitchen cleaner in a refillable spray bottle.  

We’ve been ordering our various soaps from Common Good for sustainable products that save money and plastic where the scent options are lavender, unscented, and bergamot.  We are #teambergamot all the way…from dish soap to laundry! 

And our cleaners are coming from Ethique whose mission is to rid the world of unnecessary plastic packaging, most of which is never actually recycled.  These arrive concentrated in bars in compostable cardboard packaging. Just add boiling water and voila, cleansers with all the key ingredients and none of the unsustainable packaging.  Better for the environment and less trips to the dump/recycling station for us! Win meet win.

Finally, because this is where life is right now, we store our KN95 masks in a pretty book-shaped box (similar here) on the entry table so they are easy to grab on the way out the door.

Other posts you might enjoy:

Kitchen Food Storage Organization

MORE Pantry Organization

Simple Joys: Use the Good DishesMaking Flavor-Infused Water

Live Beautifully!