“Home idea with IKEA”: a pantry-laundry-hobby room

This week we invite you to the outskirts of Vilnius outskirts, where Edita and Alvydas live surrounded by beautiful forests. But we're not just visiting, we're going to do a bit of work. After all, this season's mission is to bring order back to everyone's home. And what better place to start than the pantry! This is exactly what our interior designer Birutė focused on at the home of this family.

Before the renovation

Edita and Alvydas calls the pantry at the entrance of their home the “beetroot room”. But that doesn't mean it's just for storing beetroots. This pantry is a busy place, where the couple comes home from the outside with muddy shoes and wet clothes, cleans mushrooms and berries picked at the forest, does laundry, sews, moulds clay and engages in other leisure activities. Even more, their pets spend cold nights in the “beetroot room” too. Unfortunately, the furniture came here from different places, so it doesn't fit together and leaves too little space for all the items and activities.

Interior designer‘s task

To organise a compact and regularly utilised space in a manner that accommodates both hobbies and essential household items, including cleaning products, vacuum cleaners, brooms, a washing machine, and a freezer.
To set up a spot where Edita can do ceramics and sewing.
To keep the space uncluttered: once everything is in place, the multifunctional room should not only be tidy, but also cosy.

“Use neutral colours in pantry rooms not to reduce the already small space and choose the new pieces of furniture according to the items you have, so each of them has its own place.”

Birutė Beniušė
IKEA interior designer

A pantry room or a dream room?

When planning the interior of the “beetroot room”, we wanted to create a pantry room with a welcoming atmosphere, as the family not only stores items, but also spends considerable time here themselves. To achieve this, we divided the room into two areas. On the functional and storage side, we installed a long, easy-to-clean worktop, some stainless-steel shelves and plenty of drawers. The rest of the room is furnished like a living space, featuring wooden shelves on the walls, rattan accessories and other decorations adding warmth, as well as mirrored wardrobe doors that visually expand the narrow space.

A wardrobe for more than just clothes

PAX wardrobe with sliding doors is the key storage solution in this room. It's a modular piece of furniture that anyone can plan to suit their personal needs. The frames are available in several sizes, making them easy to adapt to different rooms. The wardrobe we installed for Edita and Alvydas is large enough to accommodate not only outdoor clothes and footwear, but also cleaning essentials.

Although METOD cabinets are designed for the kitchen, they are a perfect fit for the pantry as well. We've installed cabinets with drawers under the long worktop and deliberately left one of them empty to provide a sleeping place for pets when needed.

The sturdy KUNGSFORS shelves in stainless steel add lightness to the space, blending beautifully with the owners' old sink and the new VÅRSTA cabinet fronts. It also allows to keep everything close at hand, as the items on open shelves are easy to reach.

The key for keeping things tidy is assigning a clear purpose to each drawer or shelf. This will prevent you from dropping things anywhere, making it easy to find your belongings the next time you need them. In this pantry, all drawers are equipped with dividers and designated for different items: pet accessories, knitting materials, and more.

A nook for work and hobbies

In the gap between two wardrobes, we left space for Edita’s hobbies. Here we placed her sewing machine and added a SKÅDIS pegboard as an additional storage space above it. It's a very handy and practical for storing all sorts of knick-knacks, photos, etc. The board can be combined with hooks, containers, shelves and other accessories, which makes it easy to transform, adapting to different items one wants to store.

If the workspace lacks natural light, an additional TERTIAL work lamp can help. It is designed to easily mount on the wall, fix to the shelf or attach to the desk.

Unexpected? That's what makes it beautiful.

To accessories create a homely atmosphere in the pantry room Birutė has added lovely boxes, vases with plants and other interior accessories, giving a special attention to pets: in addition to their treats, there are also some frames with their photos.

“In areas serving multiple purposes, opt for versatile furniture. Cabinets that can easily transform and be fitted with drawers or shelves based on individual needs serve as an ideal solution for a multipurpose room like a pantry.”

Birutė Beniušė
IKEA interior designer

Would use some help?

If you'd like to renovate your home without a big investment or major repairs, you can always ask our interior designers for help. With your input and home furnishing style preferences, whether it be traditional or modern, our professionals will help you navigate our wide range of products and create a complete furnishing solution for one or multiple rooms, or for your entire home.

Have you missed this episode on TV3?

Watch it here, track all makeovers and get inspired.

What was done before?

In previous seasons, IKEA interior designers shared their tips on how to furnish odd spaces, adapt homes to changing life situations, and organise all belongings. We have organised kitchens, children’s rooms, and bedrooms, set up a home office in the living room, furnished a tiny one-room apartment, upgraded premises for family business, and so much more.