How to Disguise the Ugly Stuff in Your Home

12 ways to decorate and disguise little eyesores in your home to make the every day pretty and functional.

Warning: Totally random post ahead.

But this is one of the things I get questions on that I hardly think about… ALL of the “ugly” stuff in our house that is out of sight and out of mind.

Any time I share our living room in Instagram Stories, some of y’all ask, “Where are your TV cords?!”

Or “How do you function without a mud room?”

Or “How do you keep your house clean with kids?”

(P.S. Our messy house tour is proof we don’t actually have that one mastered, and that’s okay because we’re embracing this season with our littles.)

But for the other stuff, these are some of my favorite solutions for making the “ugly” look pretty. I hope it helps y’all in some way.

(Some affiliate links are provided in this post. Full disclosure here.)

How to Disguise the Ugly Stuff in Your Home:

1. Hide cords with cord covers

If you have your TV mounted on a wall with cords running everywhere, these magical little things called cord covers are suuuuper easy for making them blend into the wall. We wrapped our TV cords, stuck their sticky side to run along the top of our mantel and down into the corner to connect to a hidden outlet. Then we just painted the covers the same color as our wall so they disappeared.

2. Put electronics in cabinets with grate/glass fronts

This one really goes hand-in-hand with #1 but if you have a gaming system or a cable box or any other electronic components, store them in a cabinet or console with a grate or glass front to allow remote signals. Our DIY window seat is one of my favorite projects ever because of this.

3. Use a cake stand to corral soaps beside the sink

This little cake stand helps us prevent scrub brushes and soaps from scattering all around our kitchen sink. And it’s cute!

4. Place magnetic frames on breaker boxes

Our breaker box is smack dab in the weirdest place behind our washing machine in our laundry room, so to disguise it (while still making it visible in case of emergencies), we painted it the same color as the wall [Sherwin Williams Slate Tile] and hung up these free printable vintage clothesline images with magnetic squares to make the frames easily removable.

5. Make a thermostat cover using a picture frame without the glass

Our thermostat was right in the middle of our hallway’s end wall, so to hide it, I took the glass out of a frame and hung it on top of the thermostat as a cover so it could still receive temperature readings to operate. Any time we need to adjust it, the frame easily lifts off.

6. Keep your Google Home or Alexa tucked away on a tray.

To keep our Google Home Mini accessible but out of the way, we place it on this tray in the corner of our kitchen countertop so we can play music while we cook or get weather updates as we eat breakfast in the mornings.

7. Utilize pegboard for cleaning supplies

We don’t have much cabinet storage to spare, so to keep our cleaning supplies orderly, we utilize vertical storage on peg boards in our laundry room. These little baskets help a lot too.

8. Use pretty dispensers for generic soaps and lotions

To pretty up hand sanitizer and baby lotion in Regan’s nursery, we store them both in these decorative soap dispensers instead.

And in our laundry room, we keep our liquid detergent in a drink dispenser.

9. Use plants for disguising routers and smart home components.

If you have any routers or small electronics, tuck them beside or behind a small plant to keep them out of sight.

10. Place baskets under a bench for shoe storage

We don’t have a mud room in our house except for a couple of hooks in our laundry room to hang up jackets. So to help with the shoe storage situation downstairs, we keep baskets underneath a bench beside our back door.

11. Keep pet toys or kids’ toys in a large basket in common areas.

We keep most of the kids’ toys in their playroom or bedrooms, but for any small toys that make their way into the living room, we store them in a large basket on our fireplace hearth and just place a pillow on top to keep them easy to reach without being visible.

12. Store pantry items in jars and baskets.

For dry ingredients we use often in recipes, we keep them all stored in these jars with these labels to decrease the packaging clutter and streamline our limited pantry storage. And it’s pretty!

Do you have any other solutions for hiding the “ugly” around your place? I’m sure there are more around here, but it’s amazing how such little changes make a huge difference in our every day.

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