*Originally published in 2020
Updated on February 20, 2024:

As the last of winter's chill ebbs away and the first tender blooms of spring begin to unfurl, the season not only heralds the time of natural renewal but also cues the annual ritual of spring cleaning. This is the perfect opportunity to declutter your home, organize your living spaces, and breathe new life into items that have been collecting dust.

This is why we want to explore the 5 best ways to efficiently spring clean your house and creatively repurpose your old belongings. From repainting old furniture to transforming pieces into chic decor, get ready to embrace spring with a fresh and sustainable approach.

Spring Cleaning: Ways to Repurpose Old Items

Old ladder into a bookshelf

Old wooden and metal ladders can be used for a lot of different things, and turning them into shelves is one really easy way to repurpose them. This can be done in a few ways: cutting a wooden ladder in half and mounting it horizontally in the corner of a room; adding shelves to a standing ladder, then painting and setting it in a nice spot; or mounting part of the ladder horizontally on the wall. HGTV has a nice video tutorial on it to give you some ideas on how to get this project going.

This is an item we have seen for sale on sites like Etsy, so if you don't have a spare ladder hanging about, you could always update your house just for the heck of it! 

Old door into a table

Take an old door and stain it, or clean and refurbish one with glass windows. Then, simply mount it on legs to create a one-of-a-kind table that's always going to be a conversation piece. The old-door-to-new-table concept is a way to make some very chic country-style furniture very easily and for a very low cost.

HGTV has a very simple how-to that can take you step-by-step through turning an old ugly door into a gorgeous kitchen table. DIY Network also offers a similar take, turning an old door into a chic coffee table. Either of these projects will leave visitors asking you where you found that table.

Old luggage into chairs and loveseats

This one is super funky yet totally cool. It creates a conversation piece and a very comfortable piece of furniture to add to your favorite room.

Start by taking an old piece of luggage, and opening it up to form the basic chair structure—you can add legs if you want—then add cushioning and upholstery. Mother Earth Living has a great set of instructions you can check out for some inspiration. There are a ton of options for how to do this; the chair can sit on the ground, have legs, or be a stool/ottoman. This is a great option when you have an old ornate or antique suitcase lying around.

Old tire ottoman

This one is super cool because it takes something you would not think of as an inside object, a tire, and turns it into something truly beautiful. The transformation will leave you with a great usable piece of furniture and recycle something that might end up clogging up a landfill. This can be made into a rustic or very pretty ottoman with a few simple materials. It can be an outside piece with a tabletop or a cushy seat inside with an added pillow and fun cover.

Check out these instructions from HGTV on how to make an upcycled one of these.

Old tires can also be made into chairs, planters, play equipment, rubber chips for playgrounds, and more. There's really no end to what these can be used for once you start thinking outside the box, or "off the car," so to speak.

Books into shelves and furniture

Sometimes a book has just run its course, and there's nowhere to put it on the shelf, but you don’t feel like donating it, or worse yet, being tossed in the trash. When looked at as building material rather than reading material, books are great building blocks. Making a book into a floating shelf is a super simple project that takes a dusty old encyclopedia and turns it into an awesome floating shelf. This simple method from eHow shows how to make them from hardbacked books really easily.

Beyond making shelves, books can also be used to construct full pieces of furniture. A stack of books with a glass tabletop on top makes a great coffee table. An entire book desk can be built from old hardback books.

There are so many ways to reuse and refurbish unused and retired items. Spring cleaning and extra time on our hands is a perfect time to explore the world of possibilities under our own roofs!