More Handy Uses for Clementine Orange Crates

A while back, I wrote a post about repurposing clementine orange crates as shelving. I always have a stash of clementine crates that people save for me (thereby keeping them out of the landfill), and in most cases, I dismantle them to make other things. But there are also many ways to use these strong little wooden boxes around the house without much alteration. 

Reign in the Paper Clutter

A standard clementine crate is 11.75" (30 cm) long and 8" (20 cm) wide (it is perhaps dorky that I know this, but there you go). So it's a good size for storing mail and paper clutter.

I hot glued some burlap to this clementine crate (including the bottom so it doesn't mark up my counter) and set it on my kitchen counter to collect all the random papers that accumulate at our house. This keeps the papers in one place instead of scattered all over the place. Every few weeks, I sort through it to file things away or recycle the papers we don't need. 

Minimize Cupboard Chaos

At 11" (30 cm), the length of a clementine crate suits the depth of any standard kitchen cupboard. It's a perfect basket for organizing bagged and packaged goods in your pantry or kitchen cupboards because it's straight and strong (after all, it carried 30 some odd pieces of fruit across thousands of kilometres).

I covered this crate with paper and labelled it. When I need rice or noodles or quinoa, I just pull the crate off the shelf. Easy peasy, and no disastrous spills of thousands of tiny grains.

Tidy Up Your Cookbook Stash

If you're like me, you have too many cookbooks: some enormous ones that nearly break your wrist when you pull them out of the stack and some small and thin ones that never stand up properly. A clementine crate is the perfect solution because it's the right size for small books, and its flat bottom and sides keep the books nice and straight. (It's okay: "flat bottom" makes me laugh too.) A clementine crate full of books makes a sturdy book-end for your wrist-breakers as well.

So, there's three ideas for the next three clementine crates that come home with you from the grocery store. As for the rest, give them to me :)