The IKEA Shoe Cabinet Hack That Adds Storage Where You Didn't Know You Need It

Efficient storage solutions are often the key to maximizing the value of your home's square footage. The right cabinets, shelves, and drawers can make all the difference when it comes to arranging your dream living room, straightening up your garage, or making a small entryway feel bigger. Sometimes, the best storage solutions are the ones with the potential to fit within a variety of rooms and living spaces. IKEA's TRONES shoe cabinets are an excellent example: Though they're branded as a neat way to keep your sneakers off your doormat, they're also great for bedrooms, closets, and bathrooms. One creative and surprisingly smart place to put them could be under your bay windows.

If you have bay windows in your home, it can sometimes be tricky to figure out how to use the alcove that's just below them. However, a set of TRONES cabinets could be an excellent way to fill the space, thanks to the product's narrow design. If your bay windows are in your living room, you could install your cabinets below them to prevent your kid's toys, your DVD collection, or your photo albums from contributing to the clutter. If you have a bay window in your hallway or on a staircase landing, you could hold linens or cleaning supplies in these fixtures instead. You could even try a unique hack from Instagram user bungalow_on_baker and install a shelf above your cabinets to create a makeshift windowsill, if you don't already have one.

The trickiest part of installing IKEA's budget-friendly cabinets below your bay windows is planning everything around the dimensions of your space. If you have a straight wall below your windows, this step is relatively easy. All you need to do is measure the wall's length and divide it by the length of one TRONES unit, which is 20.5 inches. Round the resulting number down to find out how many cabinets will fit. If your wall angles inward to match the orientation of your windows, and you're planning to install cabinets on the window's wall segments, you'll need to account for the depth of the cabinets as well when determining how many of them you should install.

When the TRONES is closed, it's 7 1/8 inches deep. You can cut two strips of paper or cardboard to this length and use them as makeshift cabinet sides to determine how much space you need to leave between the cabinets so they can open. This also allows you to find out how many cabinets your angled wall can fit. After installing your cabinets according to their directions, attach wooden panels to the tops with wood glue to create shelves. You could extend these pieces a bit farther to cover up the angular spaces in the corners between the cabinets and then join all of the panels together with miter joints to create a unified shelf that will add extra storage to your living room.