Hack An IKEA Kitchenette To Upgrade Your Garden With This Clever Idea

IKEA is the place to go if you are into trendy and affordable home and garden items. Not only are IKEA's pieces super cute and functional as they are, but many of them can also be modified or used in unconventional ways, making it a great place to find budget-friendly and time-saving hacks. If you've visited an IKEA lately, you may have noticed the SUNNERSTA Mini Kitchen on the showroom floor. The miniature IKEA kitchen system can be used as a temporary kitchen solution during renovations or in your laundry room for a storage and sink solution. It's advertised as a home item, but believe it or not, with a bit of creativity, it could be the gardening hack you didn't know you needed. For this project, you will create a potting station where you can complete multiple gardening tasks in one place. All you need for this garden upgrade is a SUNNERSTA Mini Kitchen and whatever gardening accessories you want. 

Since there is no one right way to implement this hack, you can customize it to fit your specific gardening needs. Whatever direction you choose to take this project in, it's sure to make potting your plants easier, as well as storing your gardening gear. Some IKEA accessories complement this kitchenette well and are perfect for specific gardening projects. You can also use items you already have, or purchase them from a gardening center or even Dollar Tree to go with your new potting station. The ways in which you can customize this hack are endless.

The first thing you need to do for this project is choose where you want your potting station to be. If you want to have it inside your home or in an enclosed sunroom, there's nothing extra you need to do after assembly and before adding your accessories. If your kitchenette will be exposed to rain or high levels of humidity, though, you will need to apply a coat of rust-protectant. Even just a coat or two of paint will help prevent the unit from rusting. During assembly, you can choose to skip the faucet installation if you don't need a functional sink. Instead, you can use superglue to affix a piece of stainless steel or another type of material to cover the sink and create more counter space. When you have your unit prepped, assembled, and placed where you want it, it's time for the fun part: adding accessories. 

The kitchenette comes with five hooks that you can use to hang your garden tool set (with the option to buy more if you want), but the unit is also made to hang SUNNERSTA containers, as well. These containers can hold seed packets, pH test kits, or any other small gardening items, and the shelves on the unit fit stacks of 10 by 20 seed starter trays perfectly. IKEA's SORTERA bins can be added to the unit for soil storage or as a temporary compost solution.