IKEA's Budget-Friendly Kitchen Product Is A Versatile Pick For Home Organization

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Fans of the VIMPELFISK metal basket cutlery holder from IKEA already know how great it is. With four small compartments, plus one larger one that spans the length of the basket, keeping your forks, knives, spoons, and napkins (basically half of your kitchen) in order is just par for the course. However, the piece's compartmentalized nature makes it ideal for all kinds of home organization tasks.

Since this item was originally touted as a kitchen or pantry storage solution, it's worth talking about some other uses for it in the kitchen before moving on to the different ways you can take advantage of it in your home. For example, if you love cooking with all manner of spices, this could be a way to keep your spices neat and tidy in the cupboard. And while it may not be large enough to hold all of your spices, it might be a good candidate for helping you organize your most-used ones, like salt, pepper, garlic, and basil. The longer side works well for oft-tapped condiments, like Tabasco or soy sauce, allowing you to keep these items together for easy use.

Or make the bin task-specific. Say you grill a lot with certain barbecue spices, like Spice Lab BBQ Barbecue Spices and Seasonings Set. Use the caddie to keep those spices on the ready for your next cookout. As for the back storage bin, it's the place you'd stash utensils, like the tongs and spatulas in this grilling set from Amazon Basics Store. And because the IKEA piece has a handle, it's not a problem to carry the cooking caddie from the kitchen to the grill and back again.

Items like tablets and mobile phones keep your kids occupied with games, videos, and other activities in the car and at home. Because of the ubiquity of these devices nowadays, it's even possible to find furniture, like TV entertainment centers, that have USB ports in them, just waiting to charge Junior's tablet. You can use the IKEA carrying caddie to stash cords, electronics, and even solar phone chargers from the Durecopow Store (for those times when the power goes out). Once the IKEA VIMPELFISK carrying caddie is filled with your stuff, stash it on your entertainment center to keep your tech items organized until you need them.

On the less techy side of things, the organizer is the right size and weight to carry coloring books, crayons, flashcards, playing cards, pencils, and small drawing pads. You can stock the caddie with low-tech activity items like these and place it in a place your kids can access easily when they're bored. Or if you have trouble keeping items like shampoo, conditioner, toothbrushes, and toothpaste, or your brushes and combs in one spot, pack those items in the caddie. Place a plastic shower cap from the Pengxiaomei Store over the top of the carrying caddie and secure it to the IKEA piece with a small bungee cord to keep everything inside the caddie dry between uses.

Most artists and crafters like to have their supplies organized. It makes it easier to find a specific paint color or the right knitting needle when they need them. There are a few of these uses that are worth mentioning in more detail because they speak to why the IKEA storage caddie is particularly helpful in certain artsy situations.

For the colored pencil artist who works on extra-large pieces of artwork and uses a large amount of specific colors like black Cezanne Premium Colored Pencils, it's handy to have an organizer that can hold at least five of the same color in one compartment. This organization hack allows the artist to choose a tool quickly, without having to dig through a pile of different pencils to find the right color. The same principle works for paint brushes of a specific size or shape, or drawing pencils with a specific lead hardness. This caddy also makes the supplies portable, allowing an artist to move them to a new workspace.

Along the same lines, the caddie would be great for the jewelry artist who works with beads. Each compartment could be earmarked for a bead of a specific color or design, which the artist could grab at a glance. (Of course, it's best to work with big beads. Very small ones might slide out of the holes in the basket.) In the caddie's larger space, bits of leather, string, jewelry clasps, and the like could be stored away, along with other tools, keeping the artist's jewelry-making supplies in one convenient spot.