simple solutions: names mean nothing.

I married a guitar enthusiast. For a long time, his instrument sat in a corner of the living room, between the wall and bookshelf. Because this wasn't a very convenient or good looking place to store the guitar, item one on our home revamp list was to find it a permanent home.

We decided to hang it on an empty wall and started searching for a guitar hanger. The budget for our home revamp was a mere $20 so when the only hangers we found were half that and more, we got a little nervous.

All I really needed was a hanger, it didn't specifically have to be a guitar hanger. So I went to the hardware store and found exactly what I was looking for... a garage storage hanger, usually used for shovels and bikes. For only $3.

That hanger was made to hang a guitar, even if the tag said otherwise.

Just because a product comes out and says it's the solution, doesn't mean it's the simplest, or the easiest, or that it's the right solution for you.

Do-it-yourself projects often provide great solutions for situations like these, but they aren't always the easiest option. We could have tried to make a guitar hanger ourselves, but not for less than $3 or for less time than it took us to drive to the hardware store.

Sometimes we spend hours trying to recreate the wheel when someone has already done it for us; they just called it something different.

Am I the only one this has happened to? What unexpected items have solved your problems?
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Simple Solutions is a blog series about how to make a house a home and how to do so on a budget. You can find the rest of the series here. Have your own Simple Solution? Do tell! I love to share reader's solutions on the blog. Have a problem that needs a solution? Let me know and I'd be glad to help! Answers to reader's questions will be featured in this series as well.