Closet Clean-Out: Five Ways to Upcycle Wire Hangers

Are you capable of looking at a wire clothes hanger without flashing back to that one particularly disturbing scene from Mommy Dearest?

Yeah, me neither.

I think we all share this same cultural trauma, because wire hangers are one of the most loathed aspects of our commercial society, and yet also, curiously, one of the most ubiquitous. Nobody wants to actually use wire hangers for their clothes (those bumps they put on the shoulders of your shirts!!!), and yet to just throw them away…ick.

Fortunately, wire coat hangers have one absolutely fabulous thing going for them. They’re made from wire! You can do so many wonderful things with wire! You can completely transform an awful wire hanger into something else, amazingly useful or amazingly beautiful, simply by remaking that wire.

Here are five projects to get you started:

I got really into making wreaths from natural and upcycled materials this holiday season, so I am all about this wire hanger and Christmas ornament wreath, courtesy of Eddie Ross. The wire hanger forms the infrastructure, which is the trickiest part of making your own wreath since it’s so tempting to buy those pre-made Styrofoam wreath forms- yuck!

To make this wreath into a festive decoration for a different holiday, or perhaps an all-season decoration for your front door, you could actually use any kind of bauble with a hole large enough to thread a wire hanger through–vintage jewelry pieces, paper mache ornaments, Life Savers, etc.

[The image on this page is the property of Eddie Ross.]

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