10 Clever Ways To Turn An Affordable IKEA Plastic Bag Holder Into Useful Storage Around Your Home

In the realm of useful storage solutions, there are few more versatile resources available than the IKEA VARIERA plastic bag dispenser. Despite costing only several dollars, this nifty storage solution can help you wrangle what would otherwise be single-use grocery bags into reusable trash bin liners. If you aren't in the habit of reusing grocery bags, or you already have a dispenser for them, you may think that the VARIERA cannot help you — this assumption, however, is far from the truth. Beyond the simplistic purpose of being a plastic bag dispensing storage hack that'll help keep your kitchen clutter-free, the VARIERA is able to be easily repurposed around the house in a number of ways. These unique approaches to putting the plastic bag dispenser to use can keep your inventory more organized and better maintained, whatever your needs may be. 

Not sure how the IKEA VARIERA could ever be anything beyond a holder and dispenser of old plastic grocery bags? The container can easily be attached to the inside of a closet wall where it can hold socks or underwear. If you consider yourself to be a crafts-inclined person, you can store wrapping paper vertically in it, or slide rolls of vinyl through the circular holes, horizontally. Use it to keep on top of your kid's hockey sticks, or even mount it on its side to serve as a hay-holding feeder for your bunnies and guinea pigs. You'll see that there are many open-ended applications for this very basic IKEA storage solution.

While marketed as a plastic bag dispenser to help you reuse grocery bags, the IKEA VARIERA also serves as an ideal dispenser for other small everyday items — such as socks. You can put your VARIERA to use as a sock dispenser by simply rolling the socks, and then depositing them in the top. For babies' and children's socks, you can extract them out of the small circular openings on the sides, while adult socks can be taken from the elongated oval openings. You can also use it to hold underwear.

Wrapping paper can be a bear to store and organize (this is why it often winds up under beds and in large plastic bins), much less to keep track of what you have. A great way to repurpose the VARIERA plastic bag dispensers is by using them to hold rolls of wrapping paper. Each one can hold a few rolls vertically, so you can sort them by color, pattern, or occasion. 

For some regions of the country, umbrellas are an everyday necessity, but they can also easily get in the way. Using a VARIERA plastic bag dispenser to store your umbrellas is a brilliant hack, as it allows you to easily put them away and retrieve them. Remember that trapped moisture is the enemy of umbrellas, so prior to collapsing and wrapping your umbrella make sure that it has fully dried out first — this will keep it in the best condition for the longest amount of time. 

If you have bunnies, guinea pigs, or other hay-eating furry pets, you can turn your VARIERA into a clever wall-mounted feeding trough to hold hay. You can easily position it at a level that is ideal for their height and the large opening on the end makes it seamless to refill on a regular basis (which is useful given how much hay these animals need to eat). Since the VARIERA is priced affordably, it's also cheap to replace if it gets chewed up or worn out from time to time.

Looking for some covert storage to place around your home? The VARIERA is an excellent blank canvas that can be covered in decorative paper or fabric using some hot glue as the adhesive, then mounted basically anywhere in order to hold various items. You can use it for practical storage, like to hold remote controllers or you can mount one on the wall for decorative purposes, such as to hold some long stalks of dried florals or as a makeshift light sconce. The only limit is your imagination.

Hockey sticks are one of those sporting gear items that can be difficult to store. If tripping over them on the garage floor is something you've grown tired of, you can craft wall-mounted hockey stick holders with just two VARIERA bag dispensers. You'll need to use a sharp blade to cut off the bottom of one of the dispensers, then mount it on the wall directly above another fully intact one. You can then slip the hockey sticks through the first dispenser and into the bottom where they will rest securely until your kids need them.

If you have an artistic streak, you know that art paper is something you never want to be without. It is also simultaneously difficult to store and keep in good condition, since it can get crumpled or ripped if you don't have a good storage system in place. Enter the VARIERA, which provides an excellent out-of-the-way spot to store your large rolls of art paper. You can mount one in your studio or in your kids' art room, giving easy access to this material whenever you need it.

While most of the hacks to this point have show how you can use the VARIERA in a vertical position, you can also switch things up and transform your cleaning supply storage with IKEA's genius VARIERA bag dispenser hack. Once mounted horizontally, stack folded cleaning cloths inside the container, use the circular cutouts to hook bottle sprayers, squeegees, dusters, and anything else lightweight that you need to grab quickly on cleaning day. You can even keep a few plastic bags stuffed down one end of the dispenser, merging the originally intended purpose with a new setup.

Looking for a practical way to keep your toilet paper stored nicely in the bathroom without taking up cabinet space? Or, perhaps your powder room has a free-standing sink without any under-the-sink storage. A spray-painted VARIERA serves as an inexpensive IKEA hack that keeps extra toilet paper organized and out of sight. Mount it to the wall right next to the toilet for easy access and restocking of your roll holder. Remember that not all toilet paper rolls are created equal and extra large rolls might not fit inside the VARIERA.

You'll need several VARIERA bag dispensers for this hack: Apply hot glue to the flat backs of the dispensers, then press them together until they've dried. Thread your vinyl rolls horizontally through the circular openings for ample storage. The whole setup should be stable enough to rotate manually to see your inventory, or you can position the entire system atop a lazy Susan so you can more easily turn it around.