Keep Baseball Hats Neat & Tidy With This Brilliant Dollar Tree Storage Solution

Baseball hats are one of those things that seem to accumulate quickly in our wardrobes. It's never enough just to have one, which means you end up with a giant pile of them before you know it. While it might be fun to collect them, they can be notoriously difficult to organize. If you have a robust collection, displaying them clearly on a shelf can take up too much space, but piling them inside a bin or container makes it hard to see what options you have. In an effort to keep a small footprint while also letting you see your options clearly, you can instead display them on a Dollar Tree paper towel holder. It might sound weird at first, but if you install the holder onto the wall, it transforms into a compact hat rack. 

This is a great hack to try because it's affordable and easily accessible. The entire project will set you back a mere $1.25 for the paper towel holder, plus the cost of a few screws and R-type wire clamps or a Command hook, which is great for folks looking to stay on budget when updating their closet storage. It also doesn't require you to use any complicated tools or set up elaborate shelving systems, making it accessible to people who are relatively new to DIY home improvement. Curious about how to pull it off? Here is how to transform a paper towel holder into a hat rack. 

The idea of this hack is to turn the paper towel holder into a large hook that can hold multiple baseball hats at once. To pull it off, all you need to do is attach it to your closet wall or do with the help of R-type cable clips. Those are the plastic loops that traditionally help keep cords in place against walls and baseboards, but you can repurpose them to attach your holder to the wall. Simply slip the clip around the paper towel holder's metal base, and drill the screw through the eyelet to secure it to the wall. You can get a 50-pack on Amazon for $8. If you would prefer not to drill holes into the wall, you can also use a large Command hook. Adhere the hook to the wall, and then slip the holder base over the hook. 

Now that you have your installation complete, add your hat collection to the holder. If you have quite a few of them, you might find that the hats at the end could have a tendency to fall off. To keep them locked into place, try threading a cap with a Velcro or snapback strap through the end of the holder. This will act like a stopper. If you don't have a hat that fits this description, you can also try adding something bulky to the end of it, like a vertically placed chip clip or a clothespin.

While this space-saving Dollar Tree find can change the way you store caps, it's most convenient to use on baseball hats with Velcro or snapback straps. That's because those hats will be much easier to remove from the rack. If they don't have a detachable strap, then you would have to remove all of the hats from the rack to access the one that you want to wear. This can become cumbersome after a while (though it's hardly the end of the world). That being said, when an organizational hack becomes inconvenient, you usually abandon using it, so it may be wise to assess your hats before you get started.

If you don't have a lot of hats with detachable back straps, then a good workaround for this problem is to use another item you can find at Dollar Tree: shower curtain rings. Head to the bed and bath aisle, pick up a set of rings for $1.25, and loop them through the metal rod of the paper towel holder. You can then loop the back strap of each hat through the hoop, making it dangle from the homemade hat rack. That way, if you need to access a hat stored in the back of the holder, you just have to unhook it from its designated hoop. You don't have to remove the items in front of it, making it much more accessible.