Goodbye, Cluttered Cabinets: 11 IKEA Finds For Storing Coffee Mugs In Clever Ways

IKEA has always served its coffee-loving customers well, but it isn't always easy to find all the options for something like coffee mug storage... especially if you're someone willing (or eager) to try a new approach. So we've gathered a bunch of ideas for you in categories ranging from wall shelves and cabinets to islands, sideboards, and bar carts.

As you'll see, one of the major themes running through this collection is the idea of bringing the coffee (and the coffee paraphernalia, including mugs) to where the coffee drinkers are. That means taking the mugs (or at least some of them) out of the kitchen cabinets and storing them where the coffee is made, as in the case of a coffee station, or where it's being poured for a spouse or guest, as with a utility cart solution. So if you're not a fan of open storage, you might want to swipe left on some of these ideas.

Even with the enormous (and enormously expensive) coffee makers, the coffee-making and serving routine is still something of a ritual for many of us, being accorded gravity akin to tea ceremonies. So while you're wondering where to store your surfeit of coffee mugs, why not think about it from an aesthetic point of view and see if you can't add a little more beauty to the beloved process?

YouTuber @HomeByMon's new coffee station is centered around the BEKVAM kitchen island cart, but what makes this design interesting from a mug-storage point of view is the KUNGSFORS rail from which she hangs cups on S-hooks. Storing mugs at your coffee station keeps them right up top where you can quickly reach them. While this YouTuber pays special attention to the balance of elements in her station, that might not be entirely possible in the non-influencer world... what do you do when you decide to actually take one of the cups down and use it?

Blame YouTube. In the era of home video studios, pegboard has come to be more about display than about organization, so if you have a handful of coffee cups to store and you'd like to keep them visible, IKEA has you covered with it's little SKADIS pegboard panels. Of course, you'll still need to attach some sort of container to actually hold the cup. Go for a compatible shelf like the SKADIS shelf or even embrace the hook idea again with the SKADIS hooks. Or you could make like persson_maskin_ on YouTube and just 3D-print a cupholder.

If the pegboard display idea intrigues you, check out the SKOGSMOSAIK display shelf. It's more about display than efficient storage, and one could be forgiven for being put off by the somewhat garish green pegboard background. But it's an interesting piece for mug storage: The two inset shelf boxes are shallower than the overall piece, and can be positioned anywhere within the outer frame. The shelf itself can be oriented in four ways, with any of its four sides at the bottom. Instagram user @homeofzenn sat it directly on her coffee bar counter.

IKEA sells a lot of shelves in a lot of sizes, colors, and styles, and sometimes they're a little too similar to distinguish among. The TRANHULT shelves and matching aspen SANDSHULT shelf brackets are the simplest, blondest options in this IKEA lineup. Sold in 3-packs at 31 ½ inches long, there's almost eight feet of shelf for you to put coffee mugs and tea cups on. Stack or offset them to suit your space, and if you can't muster eight feet of mugs you can always use the shelves for saucers, coffee beans, and a grinder.

IKEA's KALLAX shelving units and versatile EKET wall-mounted cubbies work if you have a ridiculous number of coffee mugs, or if (which seems to be the Swedish fashion) you store your mugs in multi-use rooms along with the other trappings of trendy urban life... bottles of wine, some drafting tools, perhaps a skateboard. EKET is a modular system of basically cubical cubbies that can be arranged in various shapes, both with and without doors, so the whole thing is very open-ended... which probably makes it the safest possible bet, if you have the wall space.

Who says all the coffee cups have to be stored indoors? If we've learned anything from IKEA, it's that coffee mugs (and everything else) don't have to be stored against a wall in your kitchen. Stainless steel GRILLSKAR kitchen island shelf units are, as you might have guessed, intended for holding kitchen goods, and can be combined with other GRILLSKAR units for an all-IKEA kitchen island for outdoor cooking. So put those mugs on open or closed shelves, indoors or out.

Glass-fronted cabinets are a timeless kitchen storage solution that will never get outdated, but it gets tricky. Whatever's going on in the dishware of big-city cosmopolitans, the average middle-American is sometimes hard-pressed to come up with enough matching dishes displayed behind very many glass doors. But if you do happen to have a cohesive collection of cups and mugs, or acquire one as mentioned above, they'll look great behind glass. IKEA continues to offer simple units like the HEMNES glass-door cabinets and gorgeous storage systems like the BESTA storage combo with glass doors.

A coffee station is a great way to take some of the mug-load off of your limited cabinet space, while making everything work a little more smoothly (especially you). IKEA's HAGAAN open wall cabinets (an example of the open cabinet shelving discussed above) are intended for toiletries, but their shallow shelves are perfect for lining up mugs above a coffee maker. Instagram influencer @pieceofhayel removed the bottom and the first shelf of her HAGAAN unit and used it as a countertop cabinet; the missing shelves made just enough room for her super-enviable espresso machine.

If you're like most of us, coffee isn't exactly a dining thing. And, you know, dining rooms aren't always a dining thing, either. Whatever you use your dining room table for, it's usually going to be better with a cup of coffee. IKEA offers a lot of ways to comfortably store your coffee cups in a dining room-friendly way, like with their collection of sideboards, which covers every possible design preference , including the versatile HAUGA sideboard. If you can't decide what you need, check out the LANESUND, which similarly can't decide what it is.

One of the themes running through all these ideas is bringing the coffee to where you are, but that can be difficult with most furniture. We solved that problem for cocktails with the bar cart, and there's no reason we can't do the same for coffee. IKEA has utility cart offers like the NISSAFORS that'll work great for this. This idea also make it easy to turn popular IKEA kitchen carts into swanky outdoor drinks stations. Turn it up a notch with the RESARO mobile drop-leaf table, which has built-in storage and a built-in, flip-up table to make this a coffee bar for two.

Sometimes you go looking for a different song and find out what you want is a different singer. You might find that the storage doesn't have to be quite as orderly as you thought if your coffee mugs are beautiful objects themselves. IKEA's current palette of mugs is varied, but offers a lot in the grays, greens, and blues. Buy a set of FARGKLAR mugs, for example, in matte green or STRIMMIG stoneware mugs in pale gray-green and just set them out in your sage green or natural wood kitchen.