I'm no longer at the days of doing my children's laundry, but I do look back with a little smile when I remember all the treasures that a little boy puts in his pockets, only to be found by you when doing the laundry. Rocks, super hero's, worms, you name it, I've pulled it out of a little boys pocket! I wish I had come across this idea of a clutter catcher way back then.
I often find myself reading the comments at the end of a bloggers post for feedback before trying a new idea myself, and in this case I'm soooo glad I did! I was reading this interesting post about making a holder for your electronic device while it's charging. It had ALOT of feedback both pro's and con's. But comment #156 by a Jane Mccardle said she made something similar out of 2 liter bottles to collect the items from the laundry she wanted to distribute back to her children.
I decided to take the idea and give it a try. I did not take the time to paint or decorate mine in anyway and will leave that creativity up to you! Here's how I did it:
Supplies:
empty 2 liter bottle
empty 2 liter bottle
Sharpie Marker
Exacto knife
scissors
canning ring or other round item such as a glass
Instructions:
Remove label from 2 liter bottle. Don't worry about the label that was glued down, you'll be cutting it off.
Look towards the bottom of your bottle you'll see a small raised ring that encircles the bottle near the bottom. I highlighted mine with a sharpie marker for you to see it better, this is where I chose to cut it. You do not need to mark the ring around the bottle unless you want a deeper bowl to hold more stuff. (If you choose to make yours deeper you'll need to mark higher up on the bottle, for a cutting guide.)
To begin:
Place the side with the stuck on label face down on the work surface so you are working on the exact opposite side. You'll want to draw a pattern similar to what I did (a mountain/hill looking pattern, slightly larger than the door knob). This will ultimately be the part that slips over the door knob.
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| I also marked the cutting ring so you can see it better in the pictues, but you will only need to mark the hanger part that looks like a hill/mountain |
Take an exacto knife and make a small slit somewhere along the cutting line for the "bowl". Take craft scissors and slip them into the opening you just cut. Cut out so it now looks like this:
Next we will cut out an opening to slip over the door knob. I found that the inside ring of a regular canning jar ring fit perfectly over my door knobs, but you play around with a glass or other round object that you can use to draw a cutting guide, or of course you can free hand it.
Trace the outline near the top of the hanger.
Slightly pinch together the hanger part of your clutter catcher, just enough so you can snip a small slit in the center of the circle you made so you can cut over to the cutting guide you marked and cut out the circle.
From here you can write a child's name on it somewhere or decorate it, but it is ready to hang and catch clutter! I think I may hang one from a 3M command hook in my laundry room. Apparently once a boy, always a boy! My husband leaves behind money, receipts, pens, .....
