Repurposing Household Items: The Baker’s Cooling Rack
Note: While this entry is about a very specific item within our cottage — a reimagined, vintage baker’s rack — the message can be extended across countless home goods, as outlined towards the end of the post.
When we were designing our little bathroom / laundry room combo, I knew I wanted to leave space for linens to air dry.
Our shower is one of those spaces. When it’s not in use for bathing, we sometimes pop open a vintage, collapsible drying stand for larger, damp linens beneath the windows and skylights. Another area we reserved for drying out (smaller) textiles was the wall space bordering the stacked washer-dryer. I wanted a fold-down, slated platform for items like still-damp, clean cloth diapers, and freshly washed Swedish dishcloths, but I didn’t want a newly-made plastic or metal rack from a big box retailer. So I went shopping within our home instead.
My eye fell upon an old French bread cooling rack that was dangling decoratively on our kitchen wall, waiting to serve a new purpose. It’s the kind of willow and reed shelf once used in a French boulangerie for supporting freshly-baked loaves of bread while allowing oxygen to flow around them. This was THE PERFECT size and design for what I had in mind by the washer-dryer. But what hardware would I need in order to attach it to the wall in a way that would allow it to function as needed?
Again, we looked around our home. We found spare mug hooks in various sizes, two leftover chords from a suspended book rack (pictured in this post, 5th image), and a small piece of driftwood— all of which we could put to use to make the rack fold up and stay put, or fold down and support the necessary amount of weight.
What we ended up with works for our tastes and the semi-foraged interior we hoped to create, while serving the necessary purpose.
If this approach to interior decor sparks your interest, try this when sourcing items for your home:
Stop searching for newly-manufactured goods by a specific name, such as “drying rack.”
Instead, imagine what items could serve the same purpose based on general functionality, design, materials, size, etc.
Then consider if you already have something that could work…
… Or if you can find a vintage or second-hand item that can be repurposed.
You’ll likely save money and enhance the character, originality and functionality of your home… all while being a more responsible steward of this planet.
