Hasta La Ideas

Reader Joanna submitted the following to Ask Unclutterer:

As I was cleaning this weekend I was completely stumped when I tried to figure out how to store the three hats my husband and I own. Not baseball caps or winter hats, but two cowboy hats and my wide-brimmed sunhat. We use these regularly and don’t want to get rid of them. None of our drawers are tall and wide enough, and none of the hats have loops for hanging them on the wall. Any suggestions?

Like you, I have a similar large hat storage requirement. Everyone in our house has at least two cowboy hats (summer and winter), my son has a hard plastic fireman’s hat, and I own two large sun hats. Currently, we each have a large hat box where these hats live in our closets. I covered my hat box with contact paper for fun, but you could easily skip this step and keep the box plain. And, for good measure, I throw some cedar chips into all of the boxes as a precaution against pests.

If you want daily or even weekly access to your hats, you might be interested in a rack that is more suitable for a location beyond your closet.

I like the idea of a countertop hat display, like what you might see in a retail store, and one costs less than $30:

In an entryway, you could hang a piece of pegboard, paint it to match your wall color, and then attach hat brackets to the pegboard for less than $2 a piece:

In our previous house, we had an Eames Hang-It-All that was great for hats — but it retails for $200, so you’ll probably want to go with a less expensive option:

Finally, if you’re artistic, maybe a few styrofoam mannequin heads ($10 each) could work with your decor:

Be sure to check the comments for even more hat storage ideas from our readers. Thank you, Joanna, for submitting your question for our Ask Unclutterer column.

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