Reuse A Commonly Thrifted Kitchen Item For Budget-Friendly Bathroom Storage

Repurposing something for a completely new use can be quirky and attention-grabbing. If you saw a butter dish sitting in a bathroom, you might think its distracted owner forgot about it on the way to the kitchen. This kitchen essential evolves easily into unexpected bathroom storage. Lift up the lid, and lo and behold, it's something that actually does belong near the sink, toilet, and shower.

The shape of a butter dish is almost as distinctive as butter's wonderful taste. Most often, butter dishes have a rectangular base similar to a tray and a rectangular lid with a handle. However, you might spy a rectangular one with raised sides, a lid with a flat top, or a vintage domed dish. These shapes can easily come in handy for storing bathroom essentials in a cute way.

While a butter dish might not be one of the most common items you'll find at thrift stores, it's worth scanning the kitchenware aisles of your nearest Goodwill for one. Even if you strike out during your thrift hunting, you can score a complete vintage butter dish online for not a whole lot more than you'd spend at a thrift store. One bearing the label "butter" is deliciously irreverent when a lift to the lid reveals a bar of soap instead of a dairy product.

There are lots of directions you can go with an offbeat use for a butter dish. If you have a ho-hum butter dish with a flat lid, flip it so that it sits upside-down on the tray and attach the two pieces with heavy-duty glue for what looks like a container with a built-in base. Maybe your butter dish isn't cute enough to merit an upcycle, but a lick of paint could make it so. Plastic butter dishes that look cheap as-is take on a whole new look with a coat of spray paint.

You might not be lucky enough to snag a thrifted butter dish with both parts intact. This is an opportunity to repurpose an old, unwanted item. If you find just the tray portion, it can stand alone as a holder for your jewelry while you're in the shower, or a soap dish. Or, get twice the use out of a dish with a handle-less lid; while the tray portion houses a bar of soap, the inverted lid can corral a row of small containers to keep your favorite items together and countertops clear. Slide in a passel of cotton swabs, a tiny succulent, and a reed diffuser. Why not line up a trio of tealight candles on the tray? Place the lid nearby while they're lit, and it'll be a reminder to blow out the flames and re-cap your new candle holder when you're done.