Organization Ideas! Updates to the Garage & Studio

My daughter, who just turned 8, recently came home from my husband's parents' house with his old skateboards. She likes them so much that she decided to earn her "Make Your Own" badge in Girl Scouts for skateboarding, and wanted to get a better board with her birthday money. Yesterday she found a great sale and got an $80 Tony Hawk board for $30!!! I insisted she get safety gear (knee & elbow pads and wrist guards). But this created a teensy little problem, now I have rolling things to trip and fall on in the garage....

My husband's solution was a simple set of shelf-rails and brackets for the skateboards plus a shelf on top for their safety gear. All of this is tucked behind the back door of the garage.

As you all know, I've been working on my studio for awhile. I've been thinking I need some sort of organization under my desk, a cubby system maybe. I like this one from the site, Why Not Do It Yourself

But that particular method involves me spending money, something I hate to do when I can find a free way instead. As luck would have it, I have 2 cats, and therefore we go through a fair amount of litter. I like Tidy Cat clumping litter and it comes in these cool plastic buckets. I am sure the idea behind the bucket is to take them in and get them refilled at a discount, but no one in our town does that. So the buckets just piled up in my shed.

I counted up and I had 10 buckets sitting around unused (I have in the past used them as wastebaskets, and recycling buckets.) In order to make them stack nicely, I had to first pull off the lids, then take the handles off. I cut my hand doing one lid and hit my knuckles at least 10 times taking the handles off, but it was worth it. I sprayed them out with the garden hose and then brought them down to the studio. Here the are as my new cubbies:

My table is big enough for 4 buckets to lay on their sides and 1 up across the bottom and then 3 on their sides and 2 up across the top level. They are nice and snug so I didn't need to drill any holes for zip ties, but that wouldn't be a bad idea in the long run.

They are holding miscellaneous items for me, but I think they'd be a great solution to organizing a small fabric collection for sewing or for larger crafting supplies.