DIY Upcycle Key Wind Chimes

I have these beautiful rainbow colored keys that don’t go to anything, and some too-small necklace chains with no charms. I had seen on Pinterest the idea to make wind chimes out of keys, and I had plans to do so with my massive collection of keys. However, I decided to just use the rainbow keys for now, and hang them on the necklace chains. I arranged them about half an inch apart from each other on a clear plastic straw I don’t use and piled on clear Hobby Glue (under the chain and on top of it). Then, using a pipe cleaner hooked onto a long, skinny ribbon, I pulled the ribbon through the straw. I tied several knots on either end of the straw to keep it as in place as possible, then tied a bow on the top to hang from an S-hook outside in my back yard.

Materials:

• keys (pretty ones are favorable)
• necklace chains
• clear plastic straw
• clear Hobby Glue
• ribbon
• pipe cleaner (to get the ribbon through the straw)
• place to hang!

By the way – the sound the keys make is soft, tinkly, and beautiful! I am in love.

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An Organized Cord, Electronic, and Battery Drawer

Before buying our house, we never had enough drawer space to have a junk drawer. We did have a lot of cords and electronic accessories so we had a “cord and battery drawer” in the bottom of a side table. We still have it, and today we went through it all. We found so many cords that we didn’t know what they went to, plus a bunch of cords that we did know where they belonged – with something we no longer owned! This is the gallon bag I am bringing to Best Buy to recycle these cords:

Some things that went in this bag included:

• Old cell phone/camera chargers (The cell phones are no longer in our possession)
• Phone cords (we only use ours for the internet, and we don’t need extra)
• Computer charger that was broken
• Cords that we didn’t know what they belonged with

We also threw away a lot, such as:

• Old memory cards we’ll never be able to use again
• Multiple camera straps
• Dead batteries
• Broken earbuds

We kept chargers and adapters we use.

I labeled anything that wasn’t already with bread ties and Sharpie.

Also, used twist ties to contain the cords. (Or, once, a toilet paper tube for a longer cord.)

Used battery containers from the Container Store (found here) to contain batteries of all sizes. I don’t have any C batteries right now and I used the C-sized container to keep extra size AAs.

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Some things I love to have that I keep in this drawer also:

• A battery checker

• A reusable battery charger

This is the drawer now. It includes

• chargers
• adapters
• battery checkers
• battery charging device
• batteries
• mini flashlight
• less-used earbuds
• mini tripod for camera
• microphone
• old disposable camera that I’ll use up and find some place to develop
• old iPod Nano that I only use on long car rides (and the adapter to go with it)
• camera when I’m not using it – then I don’t lose it so much

Of course, I have other chargers and electronic accessories that I do not keep in this drawer – such as both our cell phone chargers (used nightly), my laptop charger (used regularly), bigger flashlights, etc.

Do you have a place to store your cords? Have you ever gone through it?