DIY-er: Up-cycled Toilet Paper Roll Holder

Alrighty, let's get things started on here! I've been gaining some momentum on my donation site at indiegogo.com (here's my campaign), and I'd like to start giving some of my contributors a little sumn' sumn' to feed off of until I get started on the BIG projects that are upcoming and will require the use of said donations.

So, today I'm going to give you all a DIY-er project that has made a small, but big in an experiential way, impact on my little family's desire to gain more of a self-sufficient lifestyle and lose some of those media-fueled consumerist habits.

We have been pretty tight on money after moving twice in a month's time, paying for storage units, renting a car in order to find a new apartment, staying in hotels, and coming up with a significant increase in rent plus the initial deposit. We're still catching up, and we moved into our current apartment on March 1st of this year...

That being said, while we have always been a creative family, this DIY project was spawned out of being utterly poor. It's when you find yourself in a place without extra money to play with, though, that you find what you are capable of creating instead of buying! Stay tuned, because I've got a TON of these things to share in the future of this blog :)

Up-cycled Toilet Paper Roll Holder:

Toilet paper holders in the stores are made mostly from plastic...a by-product of petroleum...or, from some type of metal and/or wood. My son and I really appreciate natural textiles like metal and wood, but we were not about to pay upwards of $20.00 for something that was going to be used to hold...well, butt-wiping material.

So, I took a wire hanger and clipped off the bottom, leaving about an inch on each side to "hook" into a wooden dowel that was leftover from another project. I drilled a hole on each end of the dowel for the inch of metal on each side to be pushed into and also to be easily removed to refill the toilet paper. The hook at the top of the hanger was just bent in more to create a loop, which is simply hung on a nail. It doesn't make any noise, as some toilet roll holders do (squeak, rattle), and because it rests against the wall, we can't pull off as much toilet paper as if it were hanging free. This leads us to use less than we used to, and makes the rolls last longer!

It holds three rolls at a time, and we find it quite aesthetically pleasing; it adds a rustic feel to our bathroom. I suppose someone who wanted a little more finished look could paint this, but we're happy with it the way it is.