Ditch The Ugly Tissue Box And Try A Stylish IKEA Hack Instead

If it's not allergy season, it's cold and flu season, making tissues a household essential year-round. Even with companies selling their wares in decorative boxes, the style factor is still awfully low. Savvy DIYers who love IKEA hacks, here's another one for you: pretty-up this necessity with the help of an IKEA basket. Snap up an IKEA HÖKRUBBA basket, snip away a rectangle in the lid that's similar in size to the opening in a tissue box, and set a stack of tissues inside the basket. Cover with the upgraded lid, and you have tissues at hand without an unsightly box.

To create your own clever Kleenex holder with the IKEA HÖKRUBBA basket, you'll also need a pair of heavy scissors or side cutters, a ruler, and a marker. While these things aren't necessary, some craft glue and four popsicle sticks, or a roll of wide washi tape and Mod Podge can help reinforce the cuts in the lid once you've snipped away parts of the weave for the tissue opening.

Remove the knob at the center of the lid, measure and mark a rectangle where you want the opening for the tissues to be, and snip away. De-box a stack of tissues and set them inside the basket's base. Send a bit of the top tissue through the lid and close it up. Now, you can sneeze in style!

This quick route will set you back only a few minutes, but the loose edges of the basket material along the cuts will also cut into the lifespan of your DIY. Keep them from chipping and fraying by edging them with trim. The easiest, yet least durable, option is using decorative tape folded over the edges. Using washi tape as decor is easy and practical; tape with a pattern rather than a solid color will camouflage imperfections on the surface once you've applied it. Try something like the 2-inch-wide tapes included in this Songdao floral washi tape set or this Songdao Chinoiserie washi tape set. Fold strips carefully over the cut edges of the basket, then cover both sides of the tape with several coats of Mod Podge.

Using a frame made of popsicle sticks to reinforce the cuts along the opening is more likely to hold the basket opening intact. However, prepare your sticks before cutting into the basket. With your heavy scissors or side cutters, trim a 45-degree angle from the curved ends of two popsicle sticks; these will cover the long sides of the opening. Cut end pieces of popsicle sticks about 3 inches long, and trim the ends to 45-degree angles. Glue them around the opening like a frame.

Is your local IKEA sold out of the HÖKRUBBA? Or are you afraid that this product might not work as well for this project as it seems? If you're worried that the lid won't fit tightly enough to stay attached while you're pulling tissues out, try a basket with a more reliable closure. The extra-small FEIALNDUO wicker shelf basket has a hinged lid that also latches when it's closed. It has a very similar material and weave as the HÖKRUBBA, so the process of making the hole in the lid should be similar as well. What's more, this basket's dimensions very closely match those of a typical rectangular tissue box; simply set the entire box inside the basket, cover it up, and your tissues stay extra clean.

You may prefer to handle tissues as little as possible before using them. Keep extra germs at bay by simply inverting a basket of the right size over a full box of tissues. Trim away and reinforce an opening, and you have a customized tissue box cover. You may want to steer clear of online purchases for this option; you'll want to make sure that the underside of the basket is something worth showing off, and you'll also want to check that your basket isn't made of wire woven with fibers.