12 Smart Ways To Use The Budget-Friendly IKEA Bamboo Dish Rack Around Your Home

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There are a lot of great IKEA hacks on the internet to help you make the most of everyone's favorite Swedish retailer's products. In the realm of DIYs and hacks, however, some are easier to pull off than others. If you find yourself struggling to stay organized in your kitchen, bedroom, kids' playroom, or closet, you might be tempted to try an overhaul that promises amazing results. Fortunately, you can easily turn a budget-friendly IKEA kitchen essential into an organizer to bring order to your chaotic space.

The IKEA OSTBIT is a humble piece of storage. Crafted from bamboo and costing only $5.99, its advertised purpose (to hold plates in your cabinet) grossly undersells the piece's full potential. It has garnered nearly 900 reviews, many of which are glowing and claim that it is a wonderful innovation for multiple uses around the house. Crafted from natural materials, this little plate holder can be brought into countless corners of your home where you have been formerly drowning in clutter. Use it to hold books on the wall or to keep your sunglasses and baseball caps nicely organized. You can also put it to work in your child's playroom, where it can invite interaction by holding puzzles or books. Stick a couple in the kitchen to keep your tea towels and baking sheets organized, or even use it as a docking station while your tablets are charging. 

Upcycle IKEA wooden dish racks into a floating shelf to display your small books with only an OSTBIT and an adhesive hook. Purchase a hook that will be capable of holding the weight of a fully-loaded OSTBIT — books and all — to avoid damaging your paint or drywall. When you're ready to do the install, simply affix your hook to the wall (providing sufficient time for the adhesive to fully cure), then hook one of the horizontal dowels from it. You'll be left with a sturdy book holder that can be hung anywhere.

Puzzles are one of those children's toys that are difficult to organize. While you don't necessarily want them out on a shelf all the time, if they are stored away in a cabinet or a box, you may well forget that you own them entirely. To give your kids access to their puzzles while keeping them nicely organized, simply slide them in between the rungs of an OSTBIT bamboo plate holder. They'll be kept at a convenient angle to hold the pieces in, but will be easy for little ones to retrieve.

Kids adore reading, but sometimes a bookshelf isn't always the best way to keep your home library organized. This is because storing books so that the spine is all that is available is notoriously unexciting for children who are more drawn to the cover art on their books. Fortunately, you don't have to spend a fortune on a Montessori-inspired, front-facing bookshelf — instead, you can purchase one or more OSTBIT bamboo plate holders and use them to display your child's books. They'll be easy to access, easy to put back, and visually appealing.

Although kitchen towels are not the most difficult items to store and organize, they sometimes get crammed into a drawer, making it challenging to retrieve them when you need one. Using the IKEA OSTBIT as a tea towel storage solution, therefore, makes perfect sense. You'll be able to see what you have and won't ever grab more than one by accident. You can get creative with your organization — sorting by size, color, material, and so on — and can even use the plate holder to manage fabric placemats or cloth napkins.

Every parent or grandparent knows the horrible feeling of finding that their little one's artwork, which was on the counter, has been smudged or otherwise tainted before the paint fully dried. Utilizing the OSTBIT as a drying rack for art that is wet with paint or watercolors is a simple hack that can save you from having to explain to your little Picasso why their picture has been ruined. 

If you are an artisan who is looking to display your handcrafted items, why not use an OSTBIT to showcase your creations? One creator has used theirs to hold their engraved cutting boards, but you could just as easily use one to display small paintings or canvases that you have spent precious time and energy creating. Use one in your studio to keep track of your small, albeit precious, creations. This is also a wonderful option for allowing your miniatures to dry without being smudged.

Small children love simple games, like stacking rings or objects on pegs. If you're dedicated to giving your child, niece, nephew, or grandkid a quality, developmentally-appropriate activity but aren't looking to spend a fortune, an OSTBIT and some large rings of any material can easily be turned into a game. You can ask them to stack the rings on the OSTBIT's pegs in a pattern, or just place the rings on the ground and let them get creative. A  LECZIVOEN 20-pack of wooden rings is $15.98 on Amazon. 

Tired of loudly rummaging through a stack of baking sheets to find the one that you need? Say goodbye to this everyday headache with the simple addition of an IKEA OSTBIT. You can stack the baking sheets up and down if your cabinet allows, or on their sides if that better suits your space. Whatever layout you decide upon, the OSTBIT will keep the sheets stable until you need them. This is also a great way to make sure they aren't trapping water while being nested inside one another.

Keeping all your devices charged can be a hassle, especially if you have multiple family members relying on tablets, iPads, or other rechargeable electronics on a daily basis. Ensure that everything has a full battery without it taking up your entire countertop by using an OSTBIT to do the heavy lifting. Turn the devices so that their charging ports all face the same direction, then plug them in for a streamlined charging process. In the kitchen, remember to keep the holder a safe distance from the sink and stove.

Similar to the floating book holder, you can use the OSTBIT to hold sunglasses if your collection is a sizable one. Make sure that the plate holder is securely attached to the wall (using 3M adhesive strips is a great way to guarantee this), then slide your sunglasses onto the rungs of the holder. You'll easily be able to see what options you have to pair with your outfit and avoid running the risk of scratched lenses, which may be more common when left out on a flat surface.

If you're a collector of baseball caps, you know that storing them can be surprisingly hard. You don't want to crush their bills by jamming them into a drawer, but if you leave them out on a shelf or on the top of your dresser, they'll just be in the way. You can tidy up your cluttered closet on a budget with an inexpensive IKEA hack by using an OSTBIT to organize it. This brilliant solution to your ever-growing baseball cap collection will keep them all securely docked until you're ready to use them.

Designed to be used in your kitchen for plates, you can also easily repurpose your OSTBIT to hold pot and saucepan lids. Those annoyingly difficult-to-store covers that you need often when cooking a meal will be easy to retrieve when you're creating a culinary masterpiece, and they won't bash into each other when opening and closing the drawer they are stored in. If you're short on space, you can also store your OSTBIT and pot holders in a cabinet — just remember to keep it towards the front for easier access.