The Budget-Friendly IKEA Hack That Transforms Narrow Gaps Into Storage Gold

In order to keep your home organized and clutter-free, smart storage solutions are key for ensuring everything has a proper place to stash out of sight. But when space is at a premium, sometimes you need to get a little creative to maximize your square footage by thinking outside the proverbial (storage) box. That's exactly what one clever Instagram user, Aden Wang (@adenwang), did when he shared a storage DIY to capitalize on the narrow gap between the closet side wall and the stacked laundry machines inside.

Wang grabbed two IKEA SKÅDIS pegboards for $19.99 each, mending plates to connect them together, and a pair of cabinet glides to mount to the wall, which allowed the pegboard to slide out sideways for easy accessibility. The SKÅDIS comes in white, black, or wood tone to blend or complement your home's aesthetic. From there, he set up the pegboard with an assortment of hooks, baskets, and trays to organize all of his cleaning supplies in the narrow, deep space that was previously useless.

While Wang used this in a laundry closet for cleaning supplies, this pegboard organization idea could easily work in any narrow gap or mounted on any wall in your home for storage: wrapping supplies in a craft room, accessories in your primary closet, spices in your pantry, small tools in your utility room, art supplies in your playroom, office essentials by your desk, and so much more. As the SKÅDIS accessories are modular, you can arrange your pegboard for a fully customized storage system at an IKEA price tag, making this an awesome small-space-savvy IKEA storage hack to make excellent use of any narrow gap in your space.

To begin this smart storage DIY, place your two IKEA pegboards side-by-side and attach them together with flat mending plates and appropriate screws. This will expand the depth of the pegboard to 28.5 inches, deep enough to accommodate a drawer glide for a standard 24-inch deep base cabinet. However, if your space is too shallow for this, you could use a single pegboard (or stack them vertically) with a drawer glide designed for shallower drawers less than 14.5 inches deep.

The next step is to locate the wall studs and/or plan to use heavy-duty wall anchors if the drawer glide placement ends up on only drywall. For narrow spaces where a drill won't fit, look for a right-angle or pivot-head adapter for your drill to install the fasteners through the drawer glides and into the wall. You'll want to plan the height placement of the drawer glides based on their position on the pegboard, spacing them out near the top and bottom of the pegboard for optimal support and lining them up with rows of existing holes. 

Once the drawer glide is mounted to the wall, remove the piece that typically attaches to the drawer and install it on the back side of the pegboard. Slide the glide pieces back together, and you'll have a pegboard that can easily slide in and out of most narrow spaces. Add various-sized hooks, trays, baskets, clips, and other complementary SKÅDIS accessories to suit your needs, and you've finished your absolutely brilliant and affordable IKEA hack for creating storage in narrow spaces where there once was not.