A tip (not on Tuesday)

 Yesterday, I was driving along that curvy road when I saw ... 

Toasty Crunch.  

And Charlotte.

... scratching in the tall grass on the shoulder.

Um ... what?  

That was pretty surreal, considering I was 2 or 3 miles away from our house, and when I left home about half an hour previously, Toasty Crunch and Charlotte had been safely ensconced in their secure run. 

When I got home, I walked out to the coop before I did anything else, just to make sure my girls were where they were supposed to be.  They were.  Whew.  Toasty Crunch isn't a terribly popular breed, but there are a lot (really a lot) of similar breeds that look just like her, so it's not that unusual to see a chicken who looks like her, but Charlotte's breed is even less popular, and there are not many (I can't think of any) other breeds that look like her.  Seeing that combination of chickens, doing something I see my girls do every day, without actually being my chickens, seems unlikely.

So TC and Charlotte have doppelgangers out there.  That's fun.

TC and Charlotte (literally) hanging around with me in the hammock
(Charlotte was on my belly--which didn't make for a very good picture, but we take what we can get)

Anyway, you came here for a tip, and here it is.

Use containers to contain.

I know.  I'm so good at tips.  Or maybe you call them hacks?  I'm good at those, too...

I have this area in my bathroom.  Hubby and I are the only ones who see this area, aside from the very occasional overnight guest.

These are things that I use frequently, but not necessarily daily.  At least not all of them every day.  I didn't want to keep them on the vanity--that would make it seem too cluttered, but I also didn't want to keep them in a cabinet or drawer, because I do use them frequently--so I keep them on a shelf of an above/behind the toilet storage cabinet.  And it still looks cluttered, no matter how careful I am to put them back neatly.

So I decided to contain them.  In a container.  This is a cute basket that used to sit on my desk, but it's spent the last 17 months or so in a drawer of the desk, so it was available for a new job.

These items take up about the same amount of shelf space as they did before, but now there's a boundary to their space, and through some mysterious psychological process, this little spot automatically looks less cluttered, just because it's contained.

Isn't that crazy?  Now my brain perceives this as one item, the basket of stuff, versus the six separate items my brain used to perceive.

How about you?  Do you have an area that would benefit from a well-placed container?