Bye Cluttered Cabinets: Turn Thrifted Paper Towel Holders Into Useful Bathroom Storage

You might already have a method for managing paper towels, but a cuter way to store paper towels is at the thrift store: old-school wooden paper towel holders. These are great for many things (and they haven't stopped being good at holding paper towels). However, they're best at holding toilet paper, hand towels, and knickknacks in your bathroom.

Wooden paper towel holders come in all manner of styles, though you're likely to spot one with the telltale wavy decoration of early American Colonial furniture. Sometimes they're completely unornamented, while others might be engraved or shaped like fruit. However, they are mostly simple dark-stained wood. In any event, somewhere along the way, these kitschy kitchen keepers crossed the line from dated to vintage.

Paper towel holders also have a few features in common, including the towel dowel, a thick rod inserted into the holder, through the paper towel tube, to keep the paper towels in place and spinning freely. The best also have a shelf above the towel dowel when mounted to the wall horizontally. This is where their usefulness really blossoms ... to the extent a paper towel holder can blossom.

If you can't make toilet paper storage more beautiful, make it more plentiful. To that end, you can stick two rolls of toilet paper on the average paper towel dowel — just think of the extra fun for your cats! It doesn't stop there; without involving any paper goods, you can use a paper towel holder as a horizontal hand towel holder. It's not hard to imagine stacking a few and having cascading rows of hand towel racks. If the paper towel holder is blessed with a little as-mentioned shelf, you can use it for always-needed bathroom storage. The only catch is that paper towel holders tend to be right in the active zone of the bathroom, and since the shelves are small, the items on them tend to be easy to knock off.

These vintage pieces also have a ton of uses outside the bathroom. So, if you find a reasonably priced paper towel holder on your next thrifting adventure, snap it up. There's no telling when, or where, you might be able to use some paper towels and extra storage.