A wine rack is meant to store bottles of wine. Often times home owners receive a wine rack for a wedding gift. Others are gifted one at a housewarming party. Most of these racks house between six and 18 bottles of wine, freeing up ample space in cabinets and on countertops.

The trouble is, not everyone keeps that many bottles of wine in their homes. If you’re like most people, you buy a bottle when you want one and you store it in the refrigerator once it’s opened. That leaves the issue of what can be done with that wine rack. Is it time to pass it along to a friend or donate it to a local thrift shop?

 

5 Clever Ways to Repurpose a Wine Rack into Storage

 

Repurpose That Wine Rack

Don’t act too quickly. There are some fabulous options for repurposing your wine rack—and each one will both enhance the décor of your home and provide storage for other items that need housing. Surely one or more will work for you.

There are a few different kinds of racks for wine. Yours might hang on the wall, with the holders for each bottle of wine lying horizontally. You might have one that sits on top of a cabinet or countertop with holes in which to insert each bottle.

Others are akin to pieces of furniture. They sit on the floor and are often equipped with wooden or metal tops that may be used as shelving. Regardless of which kind you own, you can definitely repurpose it.

Your wine rack can be made of various materials. Some of the more common ones are metal and wood. Some, however, are made of wicker, and that requires some special cleaning when bringing it out of storage and using for one of the following repurposing projects.

 

5 Clever Ways to Repurpose a Wine Rack

 

Magazine Storage

During your next housecleaning spree, roll up the magazines that are littering the surfaces of tables in your living room and store them in your wine rack. Grab the stack from the kitchen island the next time you do some housecleaning and do the same.

You can roll up three or four month’s of your favorite periodical and store them in the space that is meant to hold just one wine bottle. That affords enough room for all your favorite subscriptions.

 

Do You Knit or Crochet?

If you’re among those crafty people who knit or crochet regularly, your wine rack is your new storage tool. You don’t have to fear stocking up when skeins of yarn go on sale, because they fit perfectly inside the wine rack. In fact, you can likely fit more than one skein per hole. So check those flyers, stash your coupons and hit the craft store the next time yarn is on sale.

 

Got Teens?

If you have a teenager—or perhaps even a tween—you can put your wine rack to use in his or her bedroom. It will wind up serving as a fabulous housecleaning tool. How many times have you ventured inside your son or daughter’s room, only to stumble over a pair of sneakers, flip flops or shoes? If you’ve picked up all their shoes during your housecleaning efforts, consider the following option. Don’t ever do it again with this tip.

Depending on the size of their feet, one wine rack can usually accommodate several pairs of shoes. When you stack shoes one atop the other in a heel to toe fashion, you can definitely fit at least one pair per hole in the rack. You can likely fit as many as three pairs of flip flops in one hole. Parents of teens and tweens know their son or daughter no doubt owns at least that many pairs.

Free up valuable closet space. Make their bedrooms less of a hazard by storing their shoes in a repurposed rack made for wine. Pay no heed to the fact that they’ll likely go out and buy even more pairs of shoes to fill this newfound space.

 

Gift Wrapping Station

Do you sometimes become discouraged when preparing to wrap a present, because all your gift wrap and various accoutrements are stored in different places? Repurpose a wine rack as a gift wrapping station, and never have this problem again.

Lay rolls of wrapping paper in each of the openings for wine bottles. Purchase a cylindrical cardboard wine carrier and fill it with scissors, tape, gift tags, and more and store it in yet another of the openings. If the wine rack has a flat top, place a basket or bin on it and store tissue paper and gift bags inside.

Now you have a permanent gift wrapping station with everything you need to wrap a gift in one spot. Not bad for a useless wine rack—right?

 

Save Room in Your Bathroom or Linen Closet

Do you ever wish you had a bit more room in your bathroom or linen closet? Is it so overrun with cosmetics, hair tools, and extra bottles of shampoo and conditioner that there’s no room for towels? You can make more room in your closet by repurposing your wine rack.

This works especially well if you have the kind of wine rack that hangs on the wall, but don’t despair if you have the kind that sits on a countertop or one the floor. You can use that kind as well. Roll up a bath towel and set it in the space meant for a bottle of wine.

Consider rolling an entire set—bath towel, hand towel and face cloth—of towels into one cylinder, and store the whole set together. This is perfect when you have house guests. You can tell them exactly where to find their entire set of towels.

If the towels you place in your wine rack are more decorative than useful—you know—the “good” towels—make sure they do double duty in your bathroom. Before you roll them up to store in the repurposed wine rack, stash a scented dryer sheet inside. Not only will your towels look great on the rack, the dryer sheets will keep you entire bathroom smelling fresh. Guests will think you’ve just finished your housecleaning.

In conclusion, don’t toss out or donate that wine rack you’ve relegated to the basement just because you don’t keep that much wine on hand. Repurpose it for one of the aforementioned uses in your home.

Use these ideas as inspiration for even more ideas of your own. Surely you can come up with suggestions for repurposing this and other items in your home.