IKEA Hack – Jall Laundry Bag

Ready for another IKEA hack?  After the IKEA dresser remake and the cute and simple but absolutely beautiful addition to an IKEA duvet cover, I re-made an IKEA hamper. Have you seen the Jall Laundry Bag at IKEA? If you don’t already own one, I’m sure you’ve run into it at an IKEA store because it’s been selling for years. I think it’s the least expensive laundry bag that you’ll ever find in the market. It may not be the best looking one, but it’s actually very convenient because it’s light, easy to move around and it folds when you want to put it away. But the best part is that it’s only $4.99! For all these reasons, I purchased two of them, about four years ago.

But recently, one of them started showing signs of wearing…

And as I was heading towards the sewing box wondering how I would use a needle and a thread to sew plastic, I turned around and examined carefully my laundry basket from top to bottom.  If only I could replace the plastic bag with fabric….cute fabric that I would get from the store, first thing in the morning…but who can wait until tomorrow? What if I already have the fabric…the blue and white striped flat twin sheet that’s not part of a set anymore because its fitted sheet was lost two moves ago…? In just minutes I had found my perfect fabric!

With a seam ripper, I de-constructed the plastic bag and laid all its parts flat onto the ironed sheet that was placed on the dining table, with its good side down.

I pinned all the parts onto the sheet so that they would stay in place while I was cutting around. Each of the original plastic parts was used as a pattern. I cut around keeping the exact same dimensions.

I only did the top parts of the handles about an inch larger on all sides, because they needed a hem.

I even re-purposed the two pieces of bias tape that were around the openings of the handles, as well as a plastic band that was inside the hem for extra durability.

The plastic band went exactly where it was originally placed by the manufacturer.

I pinned every part of the fabric, exactly as the original bag was and I sewed first the top part of the bag, then the side of the bag, and last the bottom part.

When the bag itself was sewn, and so were the top parts of the handles, I had to connect the two together. This photo shows how the top parts of  the plastic handles used to be.

I placed the top parts of the handles on the stand and pinned the bag on them.  I sewed everything together while they were on the stand (that was tough! I had someone holding the stand while I was sewing. Of course, I thought of taking the stand apart, but I wasn’t sure if I could screw the screws back on).

When the first one was ready, I compared it to the original one.  At first, I thought that mine was too long and touching the floor, but the one from IKEA was exactly the same.  I guess that the longer the bag is, the less it will rip from the handles due to too much weight.

The most difficult part was sewing the handles, and this picture here shows what a pretty good job this is for someone with very little sewing experience like me!

Here is what the handles look from the inside.

The result is absolutely rewarding. Fabric is more pretty compared to plastic!

And the laundry room looks so much better with that little light blue color that the laundry baskets added!

The handles make those hampers easy to move from the bedrooms to the other side of the house (literally!) where the laundry room is located.

The fabric is pretty sturdy, yet soft, and will hold the weight of the laundry with no problem.

An open laundry bag is  much more convenient, especially for the children! Not having to pull up a lid is one step closer for them to placing their dirty laundry into the basket. Not to mention that it’s also great basketball practice!

Upgrading these two laundry bags to fabric cost me absolutely nothing and it gave me such an inspiration for doing a little more in the laundry room (coming up soon!).