IKEA Hacks

I've posted about IKEA many times in this blog. It's pretty much impossible to live in Sweden without some sort of contact with the company. Almost all of the furniture and fixtures in our house are from the store in Barkarby.

A quick internet search reveals many parodies of the difficulty in assembling IKEA furniture. Personally, I don't find it so hard, although I've had enough practice to become pretty good at it.

Recently, though, I found a website that takes IKEA to a new level. A thriving community of IKEA hackers use their products in "off-label" ways. They throw their instructions aside and create whole new creations out of IKEA parts.

Some of the new uses are fairly straightforward repurposing: a candleholder used as a bathroom shelf, or a bird feeder made from salad bowls. Other projects are significantly more elaborate.

I've enjoyed scrolling through the website. Being a strict instruction-follower myself, the idea of  putting things together in totally different ways is intriguing.

Our stuga has a few custom installations. I ordered our entryway rug to a specific dimension, and I built a bench based around IKEA baskets. Since we need to use our space efficiently in our little house, it's useful to have items that fit specific spaces, or serve a double purpose. I'll be looking both at our house—and my local IKEA—with a different eye from now on!