What if you’re looking for decorating ideas, and you’re coming up blank? Consider these suggestions for giving new life to a displaced end table.

• Put an end table outside the front door. Use it to hold a potted plant during the warm-weather months or holiday decorations during the year.

• If you need a central place to store the things that kids share, put an end table between their bedrooms. Socks, crayons and coloring books, and DVDs that move between the rooms will have a permanent place to live

• Put one inside the front door to hold keys, outgoing mail, and sunglasses. If it’s got a shelf below, store your purse in there.

• Put a table in your foyer beneath something that’s hanging on the wall—a painting, a mirror, a photograph. The furniture anchors the artwork and keeps it from looking like it’s floating in space.

• If you’ve got a small conversation area somewhere in your house, use an end table instead of a coffee table so there’s a space for your drink, your book, or your cell phone.

• If you have an end table with a shelf below, use it as a small bookcase. This could work in the kitchen for cookbooks.

• If you have an end table with a drawer or doors, place it in the bathroom to store toiletries and toilet paper. If it’s got a shelf, you can store magazines or one of those essential bathroom reader’s guides. You can use it to store folded towels and washcloths next to the bathtub.

• What about outfitting a table with a basket or beach bucket in the kids’ bathroom and using it to store bath toys?

• Put one near the place where kids do their homework, and your students will understand where they should look for their schoolwork.

• Do you have a walk-in closet that needs more structured space? Put an end table in there, and use the tabletop to put your wallet, cell phone, and jewelry-the things you take with you every day.

• Put one at the bottom and top of the stairs to hold the things that need to make a trip to the other floor.

• Put one in the laundry room to store detergent, dryer sheets, and stain remover.

• If it’s old and worn but still sturdy, move the table into the garage. Use it to store your gardening tools, the recycle bags for the grocery store, or umbrellas, CDs, and shopping bags with items to be returned-those things that need to make their way back into your car.

• Use a weather-safe end table in metal and glass outside on the patio. It can hold the portable stereo or the sunscreen.

• If you like to BBQ, put one near the grill to hold the tools, platters, and sauce when you’re busy cooking.

• If you’ve got an outdoor bar, use a weather-friendly end table with doors to store bar equipment and supplies.

If you’ve got a good piece of furniture but it doesn’t quite match your décor, do a little handy work on it.

• Sand stain, and cover the table with polyurethane to match the other furniture in the room.

• Assemble a collection of photos and other paper mementos on the tabletop, and cover it with a piece of tempered glass.

• Sand the table down, and paint it to coordinate with or contrast with the décor in your kid’s room. Blackboard paint would be a fun choice for a budding artist.

Article originally published at Source by Jennifer Akre