Ikea’s Latest Assembly Instructions Help You Upcycle Their Most Popular Products
Chances are you’ve spent a weekend following Ikea’s assembly instructions to put together a Billy Bookcase or a Malm Bed. Or, perhaps you’ve "hacked" a piece of Ikea furniture, a trend that finds DIY-enthusiasts adding their own personal touch to the mass produced pieces. Recently, Ikea launched the Repurposeful campaign: a collection of manuals detailing its own hacks that give a new life to furnishings that would otherwise be thrown out.
Some of the Repurposeful Instructions projects include a terrarium, a beehive, a birdhouse, and a hanging garden.
So far, there are twelve manuals available for free download on the Ikea website, and each is printed in the style of the brand’s famous assembly instructions: with simple black-and-white diagrams and minimal text.
The projects are split into three levels of difficulty, depending on your level of DIY expertise. At the easy end of the scale, you can transform a VARIERA plastic bag dispenser into a cleaning caddy, turn HEAT trivets into cork wall organizers, and fill a FABRIKÖR glass-door cabinet with plants to create a terrarium.
The Repurposeful Instructions are playfully designed to mirror Ikea's famous—and sometimes much maligned—assembly instructions for their flat-pack furniture.
The HEAT trivet can be repurposed as wall organizers or cork boards. The Repurposeful instruction manual demonstrates how to cut the cork pot stands to create a decorative assembly.
An earlier Ikea hack showed customers how to transform trivets into wall-hung jewelry organizers with the simple addition of old wine corks.
If you’ve got a bit more experience with tools, you can turn an AXSTAD cupboard door into a shoe shelf on wheels, or even create a beehive from an IVAR cabinet or a birdhouse from a BLANDA MATT salad bowl. One of the most popular projects, however, will surely be turning the brand’s iconic blue FRAKTA shopping bags into hanging gardens.
To create a stylish terrarium, simply add plants to the FABRIKÖR glass-door cabinet and apply weather stripping to the interior seams to create a moisture seal. The addition of a humidity monitor will allow you to easily check when plants need watering.
Ikea's famous FRAKTA bag has long been repurposed for everything from washing baskets to recycling bins.
The FRAKTA bag hit headlines in 2017, when fashion house Balenciaga produced a blue tote bag with a striking resemblance to the original from Ikea. As a result, the bag experienced a surge in popularity.
The FRAKTA bags can be filled with soil and transformed into garden pots. The Repurposeful instructions show users how to create a hanging garden using rope and S-hooks.
Sustainability and "fast furniture" might not be the most obvious pairing. With 445 Ikea stores around the world—which, according to Ikea, generated close to a billion store visits, not to mention 2.5 billion website visits in 2018—there’s no question that their products cause enormous amounts of waste. In recent years, however, the brand has launched a number of sustainable campaigns in an attempt to reduce its impact on our world.
Those with a bit more DIY experience can transform the IVAR timber cabinet into a beehive by removing the shelves and replacing them with hive frames.
The Repurposeful campaign is part of Ikea’s commitment to being a fully circular business by 2030, with an aim to create products that can be reused and then recycled. Ikea has also been experimenting with other circular initiatives, like furniture leasing, take-back and buy-back schemes, and helping customers repair, reuse, and recycle old furniture or give it a second life through resale markets.
This BLANDA MATT salad bowl can be turned into a birdhouse by drilling an opening in the base and glueing two together to form a cosy hideaway.
A buy-back and resell service, for example, allows customers to return their used Ikea products to any Ikea store. Staff checks the condition and offers a valuation, which can be as high as 50% of the original value and is redeemable as in-store credit. Ikea says that in 2019 they gave 47 million recovered products a second life. They’ve also announced plans to start selling spare parts to prolong the life of the products in our homes.
Simply cut cork sheet to size and frame it in the RIBBA frame to create a stylish pinboard.
"We really believe in the power of small, sustainable acts that people can take in their daily lives," said Ami Warrington, Marketing Communications Specialist, Ikea Canada. "In addition to becoming a fully circular business by 2030, Ikea is committed to helping our customers and coworkers make lots of little changes, like with Repurposeful Instructions, to live more sustainably in easy and inspiring ways."
More from Ikea:
Ikea Upcycles Furniture Into Homes for Birds, Bees, and Bats
Don’t Miss Ikea’s Chic, Sustainable Tiny Home—Now Open for Virtual Tours
Ikea’s Plant-Filled "Home of Tomorrow" Champions a Zero-Waste Future
Published
Last Updated
Topics
Design NewsGet the Pro Newsletter
What’s new in the design world? Stay up to date with our essential dispatches for design professionals.