There are three real advantages to using ice cube trays to organize and store small stuff, as I see it:
- Ice cube trays are dirt cheap at the dollar store;
- You can stack ice cube trays so they take up less space;
- If you run out of ice cube trays in the freezer, with a big party in the works, you can dump your tidbits into a zip-lock baggie and press your storage units into temporary service.
This idea is so elegantly simple and clever, no doubt there are those among you who have been doing it for years — but I got the tip from Buzzing Bee, who read about it in Real Simple magazine recently.
Earrings leap to mind first, here, because anything that is supposed to come in pairs has a nasty habit of one of the pair getting itself lost — but the idea of storing things in ice cube trays could apply equally well to other jewellery, or paperclips and push pins, or postage stamps, or almost anything tiny that you need to keep together in groups…
Tiny stickers for scrapbooking…
Special buttons for special sewing projects — or all the spare buttons that you collect when you buy articles of clothing where the manufacturer has been kind enough to enclose a spare button…
Your secret stash of uncut diamonds…