I’m Buying IKEA Pax Wardrobes For My Storage Closet (Here’s Why)

Here’s what I’m buying:

The price:

With tax and delivery, this entire unit will cost $1222. That cost, to me, is not what I would consider inexpensive. But it’s a heck of a lot better than the Elfa system from the Container Store. Remember this six-foot Elfa system that I looked at a while back? All of these components cost $3300 before tax and shipping.

And again, that $3300 would only cover 72 inches of my 92-inch-wide wall. That leaves me with 10 inches of space not covered by storage, and the depth of the shelves and drawers is 16 inches. I love the look of it, but I can squeeze more storage out of that wall. This doesn’t cover it, and the price is way too high for me. As many people suggested, I looked on Marketplace in my area to see if people were selling pieces at discounts, but they weren’t. The Marketplace offerings in my area are terrible. Perhaps if I lived in a big city like Dallas or Houston I’d have more success in finding them, but it’s rare to find anything good sold on Marketplace here in Waco.

The size:

As I mentioned, the wall is 92 inches wide, and I have about 21 inches of depth between the wall and the trim on around the door. The IKEA Pax wardrobes are the closest thing I could find that comes even close to those dimensions at a reasonable price.

The overall dimensions of the components I chose are 88.5 inches wide by 22 7/8 inches deep. That means that I’m going to lose almost two inches of my 3.5-inch-wide trim on that side of the bathroom door, but quite honestly, I don’t care about that. If this were a main room of the house, I would definitely care. I would take the time to build something custom just to be able to spare the trim and keep the trim consistent around the entire door. But I keep reminding myself that this is a storage room. No one else will be using this room, and even if I show people this storage room, the trim around the door on the inside won’t be front-and-center when I open the doors. They’ll actually have to be inside the room and turn around to see the trim around the door.

The time involved:

I can unpack these boxes and put together an entire wall of storage in one day, two days at the most. But when I think about building something from scratch, even if it’s something as simple in design as this last option I had considered, this would take so much longer.

Would that save me money? Of course it would. But then I consider how much time and effort it would take to do all of the cutting, sanding, caulking, wood filling, priming, painting, staining, etc. With the time I have available to work each day, factoring in the other things I have to do and taking care of Matt, that’s at least a week-long project, if not more. And I don’t want that. Not for a storage room. Again, if this were a main room in our house, I’d build custom storage without hesitation. But again, this is a storage room, and I really want to get this room done and move on to something else. And finally…

IKEA Pax gives me everything I want and need:

I wanted two things for this wall of storage — drawers at the bottom in two of the sections, and adjustable shelves. That’s it. And I get both of those things with the IKEA Pax. And not only do I get drawers and shelves, but I get deep drawers and shelves. They won’t be 12-inch-deep shelves with 11-inch-deep drawers. Or they won’t be 16-inch-deep shelves with 15-inch-deep drawers. These shelves and drawers will actually utilize all of the depth of space that I have available on that wall.

So, IKEA Pax it is. It’s not cheap, but it won’t break the bank, either. And I’m actually looking forward to the simplicity of it.

Note: I didn’t even realize it, but Pax is on sale right now at a 10% discount. Plus, I joined IKEA Family which gave me a discount on shipping. And then, for some reason I don’t know, it gave me a $5 off coupon. Hey, every dollar counts, right?! 😀 So I got the whole thing, including sales tax and shipping to my front door, for $1087.91. That’s not too bad for a whole wall of storage, including drawers, that I don’t have to build from scratch myself!