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housethingsgoing
A frog and a duck living in a 4rm resale flat
How we maximise all the metal surfaces in our house
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What do you think about when someone says 'magnet'? Well we used to think of those cute touristy magnets you can buy when you're travelling - or the pain of completing primary school science worksheets on magnetism LOL. We only started to discover the wonders of using magnets in our house after we moved in - all thanks to Taobao and IKEA. And if you haven't been making all the metallic surfaces in your house work OT by attaching additional storage/deco to them, then here's our guide to how you can get started :) 
The most no-brainer place for magnets is probably the fridge - we have a magnetic whiteboard here from Taobao that holds our meal plans for the week and also reminds us to eat any expiring or going-to-spoil soon food in the fridge! (for example, this "EAT GRAPES" notice reminds Frog to reach for the grapes first before the pudding whenever he opens the fridge) The whiteboard has english words that makes no sense (in typical Taobao fashion) and.... it's not super easy to erase as well. but we got this because it has a Duck on it - there are definitely more aesthetic options and better options with no ducks on Taobao! For the rest of our fridge, we use random magnets to hold important information (e.g. notices from the town council, bills/receipts we need to claim/scan and also... a list of chores for our regular house cleaning sessions). 
Next up, the bomb shelter door - which is essentially a gigantic slab of metal (and every magnet lover's heaven LOL). We didn't do any carpentry to conceal the bomb shelter, so the door opens directly into our kitchen. We've been collecting magnets from cities we've travelled to as a couple, so we converted the front of the bomb shelter door into a photo/travel display wall! We got polaroid pictures printed from Milligram (check them out! the service is really fast) and we've attached each picture to the wall with the corresponding magnet of the city/country we took the photo in. Blocked out the pictures to protect our privacy so Duck can continue to yap about her husband on the internet - but you get the idea :) We're definitely looking forward to filling up this whole wall with pictures in the years to come! Also we bought this cute cat postcard in the Netherlands and just decided to pin it up on the door for fun :) 
On the other side of the bomb shelter door however, we have this random magnetic storage shelf from Taobao. It contains a bunch of random household DIY stuff like measuring tape, blu-tack, permanent markers, etc - just the stuff we're more likely to reach for on a daily basis, and don't want to go digging around for in our actual toolbox. These shelves come in a lot of different styles - they have metal shelves, containers, hooks, etc so it all depends on what/how you want to store your stuff. 
Also... we're not proud to say that we have an unnecessarily huge collection of random paper bags and plastic bags (is it just us?!) so we've hung them all up on magnetic hooks like these which are stuck to our bomb shelter DOORFRAME - yes the doorframe is also metal so you can technically also hang stuff there as long as it doesn't bonk anyone's head when they're going in. Great way to keep the bags out of sight - but also... not great because it shows we haven't been decluttering enough. Oops. 
The next big metal surface in our house is our washing machine-dryer stack! We didn't attach anything to our washing machine because it's too low (and we're lazy to bend down) - but for our dryer, we have this hanger-holder thingy that helps us keep all our hangers and pegs organised. We also have a separate shelf/box thingy where we store the remote control for our Steigen. They provided 3M tape for us to attach the remote to the wall, but we find it more convenient to just have it here (and it's also easy to move around if we ever need to) Also this shelf/box thing was supposed to be a soap holder and I have no idea why I chose this because we don't use bar soap at home, but well I'm glad it found its purpose! 
The last part of this post is about our Baggebo shelves! We're using this very affordable (and also very simple) cabinet/shelving/rack from IKEA for our entryway storage. However, the profile of the rack is very slim so there aren't huge surfaces where we could slap on magnetic shelves or other items that require a bigger surface area to stick. Instead, we've attached magnetic hooks (they are from Daiso!) at the side where we hang up our caps! 
On the other side of our BAGGEBO, we also have a magnetic clip that holds important vouchers and stuff that we need to use/want to remind ourselves to bring along when we go out. We recently got some McDonalds vouchers so we stick them here RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE MAIN DOOR so we can be visually reminded that they exist. (It's not the most aesthetic way to do this, but it's the most practical oops) 
But not all our magnetic items are practical - we have this random little lamp that serves absolutely no purpose but to light up selected spots on our fridge (and we dk how to change the battery LOL) (but what matters is that it's cute and makes Duck happy) The last magnetic surface in our house we haven't made use of at all is actually our dishwasher - but we have no idea what/how to use that because the front cover will touch the floor when the dishwasher is open, so it doesn't seem too practical to have anything attached there. But if anyone has any suggestions, let us know in the comments below!
30 August 2025
