hot wheels storage shelves made from recycled materials

Upcycle an old shoe rack to make storage shelves. Organize and display hot wheels cars or other miniature toys. No more dumping the entire collection on the floor to find a particular car.

store hot wheels toy cars on easy to make display shelves made from recycled materials

     I was startled and almost jumped out of my chair when my concentration was interrupted by the clatter of hot wheels toy cars being dumped out of their storage bins and all over the floor.    
   My son loves playing with his toy cars.  It's hard to even get them put away because as soon as I do, he will decide he needs one particular car out of the multitude he owns.  The car that he wants is never on the top of the storage bin, where it is easily found.
    Dumping everything o to the floor was the only way to quickly find what he was looking for.
    We needed a storage solution that allowed him to select his desired cars without sorting through his whole collection of hot wheels each time.  
    I happened upon the idea for the display shelves a few weeks ago, when browsing customers reviews for shoe racks on amazon.com. A woman had taken a shoe rack and turned the shelves on their side and attached it to the wall to display small toys. She had uploaded pictures to her product review. I immediately was drawn to the idea.   
  The shelves would be too narrow to attract other clutter which would mean that all the toy cars would be visible all the time. It seemed the perfect solution. The toys would stay off the floor because finding and selecting a car would now be easy.

about materials

I made my shelves out of a bamboo shoe rack. The slats become the new shelves when the shoe rack shelves are turned on their side.
There are a lot of alternatives that could work as well. Some ideas I thought of included using the bars of a crib. When turned on its side, many crib faces would create narrow shelves.
Some bed slats would be suitable. Old spice racks are a possibility as well.
I challenge you to use your imagination so that you can make your shelves for free with materials that would otherwise go to waste.

I painted my shelves because they seemed a little bit splintery to me. I also thought they would look nicer if they blended into the wall, allowing the cars to stand out.

I used some old latex wall paint that we had around the house. It worked, but I would not recommend painting the shelves by hand, with a brush like this.

​Although I was happy to have used some waste material, instead of buying something new, painting this way took a lot of time. Spray paint would have saved me hours of work. There were so many tiny surfaces to hit with my brush. If I were going to do this project again, I would purchase the spray paint.

HOW TO:

This is truly a simple project. There are very few actual directions. I will share the steps I took.​

• disassemble shoe rack, if necessary
• paint shelves, if desired
• allow to dry
• attach to wall (I used double sided mounting strips)
• place toys on shelves

I made this unit for free from an old shoe rack shelf

I had a four layer shoe rack. I attached two rectangle shaped shelves to each other to make the two square shaped units that I have on my walls

  Putting up this display rack for my son's hot wheels has really had an impact on our day-to-day routine. Not having to dump out the cars to find the one that he wants means there is much less clutter on the floor. I have not stepped on a single toy car since installing the shelves. It is more peaceful in my house. I feel the need to nag about cleaning up toys less often.  That is a change that makes everyone in the household happy.
  This storage solution will work for other types of toys as well. Any small sized toy collection would fit. Lego guys and playmobile guys both fit.
    Let me know how you adapt this project to work in your home.