What if you’re looking for decorating ideas and you can’t find a blank? Consider these suggestions to breathe new life into a displaced end table.

• Place a side table outside the front door. Use it to support a potted plant during the warm weather months or holiday decorations throughout the year.

• If you need a central place to store the things the children share, put a side table between your bedrooms. Socks, crayons and coloring books, and DVDs moving between rooms will have a permanent place to live.

• Place one inside the front door to store keys, outgoing mail and sunglasses. If it has a shelf below it, store your bag there.

• Put a table in your hall under something that is hanging on the wall—a painting, a mirror, a photograph. Furniture anchors the artwork and prevents it from appearing to float in space.

• If you have a small conversation area somewhere in your home, use a side table instead of a coffee table so there’s room for your drink, book, or cell phone.

• If you have a side table with a shelf underneath, use it as a small bookcase. This could work in the kitchen for cookbooks.

• If you have a side table with a drawer or doors, place it in the bathroom to store toiletries and toilet paper. If you have a shelf, you can store magazines or one of those essential bathroom reading guides. You can use it to store folded towels and washcloths by the bathtub.

• How about outfitting a table with a beach basket or bucket in the kids’ bathroom and using it to store bath toys?

• Put one near where kids do their homework, and your students will understand where to look for their homework.

• Do you have a walk-in closet that needs more structured space? Place a side table there and use the table to place your wallet, cell phone, and jewelry, the things you carry with you every day.

• Put one at the bottom and top of the stairs to store things you need to make a trip to the next floor.

• Place one in the laundry room to store detergent, dryer sheets and stain removers.

• If it’s old and worn, but still sturdy, move the table to the garage. Use it to store your gardening tools, grocery store recycling bags or umbrellas, CDs, and shopping bags of return items—those things that need to be returned to your car.

• Use a weather-resistant metal and glass side table outside on the patio. It can hold the boombox or sunscreen.

• If you like to barbecue, place one near the grill to store tools, dishes and sauce when you’re busy cooking.

• If you have an outdoor bar, use a weather-resistant side table with doors to store bar equipment and supplies.

If you have a nice piece of furniture but it doesn’t match your décor, do a little practical work on it.

• Sand the stain and cover the table with polyurethane to match the other furniture in the room.

• Gather a collection of photos and other paper memorabilia on the table and cover it with a piece of tempered glass.

• Sand the table and paint it to match or contrast with your child’s room decor. Chalkboard paint would be a fun option for a budding artist.