IKEA ORDNING Dish Drainer hacks – surprisingly simple and effective

The IKEA ORDNING dish drainer is a simple stainless-steel drainer with space for 29 plates and a whole bunch of bowls and glasses.

It’s simple and clean looking with a minimal style. In the same series there are also matching stands for both flatware and kitchen utensils. The ORDNING cutlery holder is a popular IKEA hack.

IKEA ORDNING dish drainer
Photo: IKEA.com | ORDNING dish drainer: Learn more

The dish drainer? Not so much. Yet a few enterprising IKEA hackers have found ways to tweak and modify the dish drainer to work in surprising ways. Let’s take a look at these few rare ORDNING dish drainer hacks.

The ORDNING Tea & Coffee Shelf hack

IKEA items used 

IKEA ORDNING dish-drainer
FIXA electric screwdriver

The backstory is that I bought the ORDNING dish-drainer for the previous apartment’s kitchen, but it took up too much space in my current apartment’s teeny-tiny kitchen, so I’m using something else instead.

I was keeping all the sugar/ coffee/ tea stuff right on top of the microwave, it looked and felt cluttered and I wanted to put a shelf there anyway, but I didn’t want to drill into the tiles.

coffee station on top of microwave. before hack
before

Inspiration struck and I took the ORDNING dish-drainer apart with the FIXA screwdriver. Then I screwed back only the bottom tray (without the supporting thingy), turned upside-down.
That’s it.

IKEA ORDNING dish drainer hack - reassemble without rails

It fits perfectly over and around my microwave.

IKEA ORDNING dish drainer hack. Modified into an over the microwave shelf.
after!

I’m trying to see if I can use the top part as a side rail on my (also hacked) condiment shelves to keep the condiments from falling behind the stove. Still working on that! Fingers crossed.

~ by Meira

IKEA ORDNING dish drainer grip hack

The problem I was solving: The ORDNING dish drainer has the capacity we need, but it sits on the rim of our drainboard, which is sloped.

This makes it unstable as it can slip off easily and put our crockery at risk of breaking. Here’s a picture of the sloped edge of the drainboard.

sloping drainboard

Adding grip to the IKEA dish drainer

Materials used:

Hot glue stick (small)
Hot glue gun

Flip over the ORDNING dish drainer so the feet are up.

Use hot glue gun to make a thin line of hot glue along each of the feet. I kept to the inside edge of the feet, because our drainboard slopes down there. This way I would add grip and even out the height disparity. I recommend adding a thicker layer of glue in the middle section, see “what I’d do differently” for my explanation.

Let the glue cool and put the drainer back. It should grip well and be more stable on the drainboard.

What I’d do differently: I would add a thicker layer of glue in the middle section of each foot, as it raises slightly there.

provides better grip

~ by Courtney

IKEA ORDNING dish drainer to audio shelf hack 

The hack is really simple. I needed something useful to create a little home studio, but what I found in specialized shops was too expensive.

ORDNING audio shelf
ORDNING audio shelf

For this hack, you just need the ORDNING Dish drainer but you have to reverse the position of the railings. We have lots of place in the back for cables and electric plugs.

~ by Jean-François CAUCHE,Lille / France

Got a few hacks for the IKEA ORDNING dish drainer? Submit it here.