We were interested to see Ikea’s blog Livet Hemma‘s recent take on an idea we posted months ago: clipping boxes together with big binder clips to make somewhat freeform and sculptural shelving. We looked at their iteration of the idea, wondering if they’d seen our post, or if they’d just thought it up themselves. We were reminded of the startling way that an idea can shoot up like spring crocuses in many places at once, as though it were in the air. And that part of the nature of creating things is culling ideas that already exist and tailoring them to suit your own vision. To quote film maker Jim Jarmusch: “Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonated with inspiration or fuels your imagination…” (Check out the full quote in the previous post.) The Ikea shelves are a great example.

What ideas would we steal from Ikea’s version of clipped-together shelves (that they may have stolen from us)? What would we change?

We like how they painted the interiors of the boxes (an idea we hadn’t thought of)  but don’t like the colors with the black clips, except for the white one. We’d swipe the idea of painting the inside white, maybe using stainless clips which we find better looking.

Argentnickel/Etsy

(We couldn’t resist this image of a binder clip that we found on Etsy while we were looking for ordinary office store ones.)

We’re thrilled to know that we can buy inexpensive plywood boxes in various shapes at Ikea ($7 to $13):

We might just work with a single shape of box for a leaner look to clipped together storage…

…lots of ideas flying around….

Related posts: binder clips for d-i-y shelving and other improvised solutions

clipped-together shelving tt. 1: wood (help needed)

clipped-together shelving pt. 2: cardboard boxes

more clipped-together shelving: indie shelving’s clamps + manifesto

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3 replies on “stealing and tailoring ideas

  1. I like Ikea’s clipped together boxes, but I can’t find the photos of your version that you imply Ikea “may have stolen”. I found photos of the “original” Muuto boxes, but am unable to find photos of your “copy” of their concept? Maybe I’m not seeing the link?

  2. Hi, the links are embedded in the post and at the end as Related Posts. Here’s the main one. Muuto’s shelving is done wit proprietary clips. When we saw it, we wondered what easily accessible and inexpensive clip could be used and did a post asking for suggestions. Hence this long post on binder clips.

    Just to clarify, here’s what we said about ‘stealing and tailoring ideas’:

    ” We looked at their iteration of the idea, wondering if they’d seen our post, or if they’d just thought it up themselves. We were reminded of the startling way that an idea can shoot up like spring crocuses in many places at once, as though it were in the air. And that part of the nature of creating things is culling ideas that already exist and tailoring them to suit your own vision.”

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