Over Door Shelf

A few months ago, we had a whole house filter installed.  My husband has many allergies and having our water free of harmful chemicals was one of our priorities.  As with many other companies, the purchase of this filter came with a "5 YEAR FREE MEMBERSHIP" to Liquid Soap Products.  This is their pitch.  They use what you normally spend on soaps, detergents and cleaners to determine the "benefit" you will receive from the filtration system.  So, say you spend $100 per month for shampoo, laundry detergent, cleaners, dish detergents and hand soap. If that cost per month for the system is less than what the unit costs, "IT IS PERFECT FOR YOU".

For us, we needed the filter for my husbands allergies, any free products were simply a plus.  We had been looking for a filter since we moved into this house.  If we use the "free soaps", wonderful.  If not, no big issue.  I will continue using many of the same products I do today because I like them better.  I'm not picky about my foaming hand wash.  Their version is just fine in the bathrooms.

For those of you who don't know, this is how these types of memberships work.  When you order your 12 products a year, they all come highly concentrated and you have to mix a few tablespoons in a spray bottle or other bottle of choice.  For example, the dish soap concentrate yields about 5-6 bargain brand equivalent bottles.  This assumes you go through a bottle every other month. The foam soap yields about 64 - 8 oz bottles.  Each type of soap had about 5 different scents.  Some were duplicated across different products.  My issue with this is that I didn't want to have the SAME smell for ONE WHOLE YEAR.  Say I chose Green Apple dish soap, I didn't want to have Green Apple all for seasons.  So....we ordered twice.  Two years worth of concentrations at the same time.

It seemed like a fabulous idea.  Until I went to store 24 bottles of concentrate somewhere.   Twenty four bottles do not fit under the kitchen sink, they don't fit in the pantry, I didn't want them in the garage, I didn't want them taking up space under the bathroom sinks (nor did I want to put locks on those cabinets.... so I walked around wondering where I could add some added storage that the children couldn't easily access.

I've seen countless shelves over doorways and decided to make one for next to nothing.  I had to purchase the brackets only.  I already had the wood from my pile o' pallets that my husband had gotten for me when I made the pallet bookshelf.  He does remind me every now and again that I have not used all of the wood that he worked "sooooo hard" to find for me.

I didn't want to spend a long time doing this project.  It's cold.  It's winter-time.  I'm tired.  I wanted to make it and go.  No painting.  No fuss.  And these pallet planks are perfect!  I found three boards that were relatively the same length and measured to make sure they were wider than the door frame in the laundry room.

I got out my handy kreg jig and pre-drilled (2) sets of holes on two of the planks and secured them together.

I sent DH to Lowes for the cheapest brackets they had.  He found these steel brackets for under $6.  He also picked up 4 Toggler Drywall anchors.  These are my favorite anchors.  I find they work the best for the applications we have needed them for.

I highly recommend finding some areas in your home to add additional storage.  This place was perfect because I keep a small step stool in the laundry room anyway.  When I need to add the concentrates, I just reach up and grab one and put it back when done.  I have a few already made up soap pumps and spray bottles for ease if needed.

I love this idea so much, I may put one in the pantry for the kids games, out of reach so they don't lose the pieces?  Do you think that will work??