Okay, so the "make" in the title here may be a tad over-descriptive. Install? Hang? Add?

This may not be the most beautiful house-y solution we've ever devised, but it sure does solve a problem. I'm not sure if everyone's in this boat quite the way we are, but we have lots of stuff that requires drying out in the kitchen. We use reusable sandwich bags and soft food pouches, reuse the plastic freezer and produce bags you're not really supposed to, and go through lots of washcloths a day in an effort to avoid paper towels. Plus Lou's own washcloth and bib, and our kitchen was constantly covered with drying items. Like so:

Yeah, those are plastic bags conveniently stretched over knives and cooking utensils to get them to dry, and Lou's bib is just sprawled out on the counter. I don't have enough counter space for that nonsense. (Pretty much what you see is what we got).

I was drying our various rags on our collapsible laundry drying rack in my room. We don't have our own laundry machines, so it's important to dry things out before tossing them in a hamper, where they may not see the light of day for a full week before the next trip to laundromat. Which meant that our drying rack was busy uncollapsedly taking up valuable real estate in our bedroom - all the time.

Is it clear that none of this was ideal? I should also mention it's not a new problem: We've always reused plastic bags, and they've never had a spot that made sense to do so.

Until now.

In addition to seeing the amazing paint job on our windowsills (nope, hadn't noticed myself til just now), and the dirt on the windows themselves (cleaning the windows involves nagging the super, which is both more destructive to that relationship and less effective than nagging your spouse) you can see the very high tech job I did here. I just looped a piece of picture-hanging wire around the existing small hooks some previous resident must have installed for a half-way up shade. If you don't have six sets of forgotten hardware on your window, or want to do it elsewhere, command hooks or small nails or screws will work just as well. Just be sure to leave a few inches of clearance between the wall or window and your line.

Is this just brutally obvious? Do people have these and I've missed it? Because now that we have it, I am such a happy camper. I can't believe we went all this time with dewy plastic bags floating around the kitchen, American Beauty style. (I just couldn't stand it).

Any obvious but useful tricks your using to solve a problem? And I feel the need to apologize to my mom and grandmother for showing my dirty windows. If it helps, that's on the outside.

Have a great day!