IKEA, HEMNES shoe cabinet with 2 compartments, white
The IKEA website details the personal history of the founder of IKEA, Ingvar Kamprad (from Elmtaryd, near Älmhult). He grew up amid widespread poverty during the depression of the 1930s, and his entrepreneurial spirit focused on democratic design: “to create a better everyday life for the many people.” What this meant to Ingvar and to the entire IKEA organization over the last 90 years is that they should offer high-quality, low-priced furniture made in a smart and sustainable way for normal people to use in their daily lives. If I sound like I’ve drunk the IKEA kool-aid, that’s a fair assessment!
IKEA is a special friend of all those in small houses. It’s probably because IKEA is a European company, where homes are considerably smaller than the US: One source notes that the average American home is 4,982 square feet while the average European home is only 1,589 square feet. (At 1,444 square feet, our house is decidedly on the European side of the equation!) IKEA designers assume that your space is limited and precious, and they think about how their furniture can best improve your life while impinging on your space as little as possible. This is a much different mentality from the bigger-is-better mentality in the US with our McMansions and the massive furniture these houses need to fill them up.
As part of our home-improvement quest to create a beautiful and functional entryway space in our home without an entryway, Nick found this amazing shoe storage solution: the IKEA HEMNES shoe cabinet! This incredibly brilliant piece of furniture is quite thin: less than 12 inches in depth. That’s important for us as we need to be able to easily walk from the front door through the passage to the living room and beyond, so a deep table or cabinet in that space would not work well. It’s also a super way to store footwear out of sight in a space-efficient way with drawers that pull down to reveal enough space for 4–5 pairs of shoes for each member of our four-person family!
IKEA, HEMNES shoe cabinet with 2 compartments, white
Of course, even though we found the perfect solution, nothing is that easy—the HEMNES was out of stock at our nearest IKEA store, with no delivery options available. But luckily, we were able to plan our next road trip to pass through a different city with an IKEA where it was available… and we are happy to say that the Click & Collect service is exactly as easy as it promises! Although we are still working on lighting… art… styling… we are proud to report that the HEMNES shoe cabinet, along with a basket that slides underneath and a tray that rests between it and the front door, have checked the box of footwear storage for our home’s new entryway!
