10 Uses For The Ikea Utensil Rail

We've used 2 types of utensil rails in our home, a black one and silver one and they've both come from Ikea.

 1. Display and store mugs

Our kitchen is fairly small and we have hardly any cupboard space so I needed to find a space for our mugs to go. I like to keep the work tops as clear as possible so didn't want a mug tree. We've put shelves above our kitchen window and underneath attached 2 black utensil rails. This style is particularly good for the mugs as the hooks don't just hook over the bar, they slide on.

2. Store cleaning spray bottles

I like everything to have it's place so it's easy to keep tidy. I also hate cleaning and would put it off if I had to spend time looking for the right cleaning product. Here we've attached a utensil rail to the inside of the cupboard door under the kitchen sink. The spay bottles just sit nicely over the bar making it easy to grab and go. They can then be put back neatly without being thrown in the cupboard.

 3. Store gloves and dish cloth

We attached a 2nd rail to the inside of the other door under the sink. Here I hang the rubber gloves, bottle brush and dish cloth for wiping the work surfaces down. I also have the disinfectant spray there so we know which spray to use in the kitchen on the work tops.

 4. Storage in pan draw

Here we have a rail attached to the inside of our large pull out draw that stores the pots and pans. I've stored the pizza tray and frying pan splash guard here. However you could store pan lids here just as good.

It keeps these items easy to grab and keeps the draw that little bit tidier.

5. Under stair storage

We have a cupboard under our stairs that houses the gas and electric meters as well as the central heating boiler. We also store various other items for cleaning such as the vacuum cleaner etc.. We have a long utensil rail attached to the wall with a number of items hanging from it, including a dust pan and brush, laudry bag, bags and mop.

 6. Display photos/pictures

Here we are using the utensil bars to display photos. We've used 3 separate ones as the long bars they had wasn't quite long enough for what we wanted. But I like the effect of how it looks. We attached small hooks to the back of the picture frames and hooked black chain on to hang them from the rails.

We do plan to add something else from the top rail, we just haven't decided what yet.
The photos we've displayed are from our wedding. My perfume and flowers to the left, my shoes and broach I wore to the right and in the middle one of the official photos we had taken. We've also hung some wooden hearts on each side.

7. Store scarves

We've used the rails inside our wardrobe for storing various items.

I've added shower curtain hoops to the top rail here and threaded my scarves through each hoop. We added a second rail lower down so the scarves stay in place as we had to keep push them in when we were closing the cupboard door.

 8. Store mens ties

As with above this is also on the inside of another of our cupboard doors. It makes finding a tie to wear easy and it takes up no space in the wardrobe.

 9. Store belts

Again to save space in the wardrobe we added rails to another of the doors of our wardrobe. Just like the scarves we added a second rail to tuck the belts in place to stop them flying out when we closed the door.

 Here's a view of our double wardrobe with the rails on the inside of the doors.

10. Bathroom hand towel rail

We attached a utensil rail to the bottom side of a cupboard in our bathroom to hang the hand towel. The cupboard is to the right of the sink and above the toilet.

There are many other ways of using the utensil rail, this is just how we are using it in our house.