Container Gardening, Ten Minutes Too Late

Nothing irritates me more than when I miss a great decorating idea by thismuch; when I've noodled around (and rejected) a thousand creative solutions to a decorating problem only to give up, then have the perfect idea presented to me almost immediately.

Case in point? In a recent sweep of the entire house, Daryn and I packed up no less than five large cardboard boxes filled with items we had great sentimental attachment to but no practical use for, and took them off to our local GoodWill. Included in these boxes were an assortment of antique tins collected by my grandmother, which had been sitting in our laundry room collecting dust for literally years.

Not my tins, but you get the idea {image}

All during that time I had been racking my brains to find a creative way not just to keep them, but to use them and show them off. I considered using that as dry foods storage, but their irregular sizes made it impossible to fit most of them into our kitchen cabinets. I thought about using them purely decoratively by lining the top of our wall unit in the dining room, but all that would have accomplished would have been to transfer their amazing dust-collecting abilities to the main floor rather than the laundry room and on top of that, it would have lent the dining room a more countrified feel, which I definitely wanted to avoid. Odds-and-sods storage was also an option: I entertained the idea for a while of using the largest of the tins to store our laundry soap and the others for first aid supplies, assorted tape, loose change and other random household goods, which was only a good idea until we switched to liquid laundry soap and I realized that the size issues that prevented me from using the containers in our kitchen cupboards would similarly prevent me from using them in our pantry. Grrrrrrrr.

So as much as it pained me to do it and after years of wrestling with the inevitable, I regretfully packed them up with a hundred other lovely and much-loved items and drove them away to donate, hopeful that someone could make good use of them where I couldn't. And then my monthly subscription to Canadian House & Home arrived in the mail late last week, and just take a looky-loo at this little feature:

Photography by Michael Graydon for Canadian House & Home magazine

Apparently this is not at all a new idea, which a quick sweep of the internet clearly illustrated. In fact, it seems to be a rather common practice among the creative slash gardening set. There were hundreds of beautiful container garden images to enjoy, like these ...

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*le sigh*

Like I say, nothing drives me crazier than finding the perfect solution, ten minutes too late. But on the bright side, maybe this revelation warrants a thifting excursion some time very soon .....

For the full article, check out the April 2012 issue of Canadian House & Home (page 84); it's a great little tutorial, and maybe just the thing for all those vintage tins collecting dust around your own house :)

In other news, have you checked out yesterday's stop-start-continue post? My commitment to making the blog a "thing" rages on unchecked, and I value your opinion and input as Money Pit Love evolves. If you're a frequent commenter, I'll rely on you to really bring the {critical, please!} noise as usual. If you're a frequent reader but haven't yet left your mark in the Comments section, now might be the time you consider leaving a thought or two. I promise it'll be the only time I peer-pressure you like this (did your mothers warn you about friends like me? She probably should have ... I'm relentless sometimes :) And to those who have already left their thoughts for me either on the blog or via Facebook, thank you! Without all of you, Chatty-Cathy's or not, Money Pit Love would just be the weird and lonely photo diary of a woman talking randomly to the universe. So thank you again ~ xo.