IKEA's Alex drawers are modern, minimalist furniture staples for home offices and bedrooms, recognized for their streamlined style and affordability. In contrast, storage from Michaels consists of portable, often plastic carts and bins designed specifically for organizing craft supplies and creative materials. The main difference lies in purpose: IKEA offers furniture designed to be a permanent fixture in a room, while Michaels provides mobile, task-focused storage for hobbyists.
Let's break down everything you need to know to choose the right storage solution for your space.
IKEA Alex Drawers: The Minimalist Storage Staple
The Alex Drawer unit is one of IKEA’s most iconic products, beloved by home office workers, content creators, and makeup enthusiasts for its clean lines, practical design, and budget-friendly price. As is standard for IKEA, it’s a flat-packed product that requires full DIY assembly, embodying the brand's philosophy of functional, affordable design that can be customized to fit various home aesthetics.
- Product mix: Primary offering is a drawer unit available in several configurations, including a popular 5-drawer unit, a taller 9-drawer version, and styles with drop-file storage. The series is designed to slide under desks or pair with IKEA tabletops to create a custom workspace.
- Style/vibe: Clean, minimalist, and Scandinavian. Its simple, hardware-free drawer fronts and neutral color palette (typically white, black, or grey) allow it to blend seamlessly into modern and contemporary decor.
- Price point: Very affordable for a piece of furniture. A standard 5-drawer unit typically costs around $70 to $100 depending on location and color.
- Quality & Materials: Constructed from particleboard and fiberboard with an acrylic paint or laminate finish. While not solid wood, they are sturdy enough for everyday use holding paper, files, or cosmetics. The drawers feature stop-inserts to prevent them from being pulled out too far.
- Dimensions/Scale: The popular 5-drawer unit measures about 14 inches wide, 23 inches deep, and 27 inches high, making it a perfect height to sit beside or underneath most standard desks.
- Delivery & Assembly: Available for in-store pickup or home delivery. Full assembly is required and can take 1-2 hours for someone with moderate DIY experience. All hardware is included, but you'll need your own tools like a screwdriver.
- Sustainability: In line with IKEA's broader mission, particleboard is often made from recycled wood and sawmill leftovers, reducing waste.
IKEA's Alex drawers offer a stylish and functional furniture solution at a hard-to-beat price, perfect for creating an organized, modern workspace or vanity.
Shop IKEA Alex Drawers: ikea.com
Michaels: The Creative Organizer's Go-To
Michaels isn’t a furniture company, it's a leading arts and crafts retailer that excels in a very specific niche of storage: accessible, portable organizers for hobby supplies. Their offerings, like their popular 10-drawer rolling carts, prioritize mobility, easy access, and modularity, making them ideal for containing the beautiful chaos of a creative workspace.
- Product mix: A vast range of organizers including multi-drawer rolling carts, plastic stacking drawers, photo boxes, rolling totes, modular cube shelving, and desktop caddies. Many products come from their in-house brand, Recollections.
- Style/vibe: Utilitarian, functional, and often colorful. The aesthetic is more a practical tool than a polished piece of decor. Options include rainbow-colored drawers, simple translucent plastic, and sleek black or white metal carts.
- Price point: Extremely budget-friendly, especially with the store's frequent sales and coupon offers. Rolling carts can often be found for $30-$50.
- Quality & Materials: Mostly lightweight metal frames with plastic drawers or entirely plastic units. They are designed to hold lighter items such as paper, vinyl rolls, paints, pens, and yarn, and may not handle heavy loads well over time.
- Dimensions/Scale: Varies greatly. A typical 10-drawer rolling cart measures around 15 inches wide, 13 inches deep, and 35 inches high, with a focus on vertical storage. Their key feature is portability thanks to included caster wheels.
- Delivery & Assembly: Most products require minimal or no-tool assembly. Rolling carts usually just need the wheels pushed into place. They are available at Michaels' many retail locations and for shipping or store pickup online.
- Sales: Michaels is famous for its promotional strategy, with frequent 20-50% off deals and coupons that make their already-low prices even better.
Michaels provides highly affordable, easy-to-use, and highly mobile storage solutions that are perfect for quickly taming craft room clutter.
Shop Michaels Storage: michaels.com
IKEA Alex Drawers vs. Michaels Storage Comparison
Price Comparison
On paper, a Michaels rolling cart is often cheaper, especially during one of their frequent sales where a 10-drawer unit can be snagged for under $40. The IKEA Alex drawers have a higher starting price, typically around $70+. However, a direct price-for-price comparison isn't entirely fair because one is a substantial piece of furniture and the other is a lightweight utility cart.
For the permanence, stability, and build quality, the IKEA Alex provides superior long-term value as furniture. Michaels offers unbeatable value for quick, affordable, and mobile organization for specific hobbies.
Style &, Aesthetic
This is a major point of difference. The IKEA Alex drawers are designed with a contemporary home and office aesthetic in mind. Their minimalist design and neutral colors - uninterrupted by handles - are made to blend into and complement home decor. They look like fixed furniture.
Michaels storage is unapologetically functional and utilitarian. Whether it's a colorful rainbow cart or a simple white plastic tower, its aesthetic screams "craft room." It prioritizes function and accessibility over seamless decor integration, serving as a tool within a workspace.
Quality & Construction
The Alex drawers are made from dense particleboard and fiberboard, giving them significant weight and stability. They're designed to be a permanent fixture, holding files, books, and other heavier office or bedroom items securely. The drawers have a solid base and run smoothly in their tracks.
Michaels' storage carts typically feature slim metal frames and thin plastic drawers. This construction makes them lightweight and easy to move but also less durable. They excel at holding craft supplies but can struggle with heavy loads, and the plastic drawers may crack or bow under excessive weight over time.
Sizing & Portability
The IKEA Alex is stationary furniture. While some savvy DIYers add their own wheels, it's designed to stay in one place. Its dimensions are consistent and meant to work with desks and other furniture.
Portability is the key selling point for much of Michaels' lineup. Rolling carts allow you to bring your supplies to your project area - whether that's your sewing machine table or your living room floor - and then tuck them away neatly. They are generally taller and slimmer, capitalizing on vertical space.
Shopping Experience & Assembly
The shopping experiences are worlds apart. Buying from IKEA often involves a planned trip to a massive showroom, navigating a warehouse, and a significant time commitment for assembly at home. Building the Alex drawers is a well-documented DIY project that takes patience and attention to detail.
Buying from Michaels is a quick, straightforward retail experience. Their carts and organizers are light enough to carry out of the store easily, and assembly takes maybe 10-15 minutes, often without any tools. It is a grab-and-go solution designed for maximum convenience.
Which One Should You Choose?
Both brands offer excellent, budget-friendly storage, but they're built for entirely different users and use cases.
Choose IKEA Alex Drawers if:
- You need a permanent piece of furniture for a home office, bedroom, or makeup vanity.
- Your primary desire is a clean, modern, and minimalist aesthetic that blends with your decor.
- You are okay with investing a few hours in a DIY assembly project to achieve a polished result.
- You need to store moderately heavy items like stacks of paper, files, books, or devices.
Choose Michaels Storage if:
- You need to organize lightweight arts and crafts supplies like vinyl rolls, paint, yarn, or beads.
- Portability is your top priority and you want to roll your storage from place to place.
- You want an organizing solution that's ready to use almost immediately out of the box.
- You are looking for the most budget-friendly option possible and love snagging a good deal with a coupon.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is an IKEA Alex drawer or Michaels cart cheaper?
A Michaels cart is usually cheaper upfront, with prices often dipping below $40 during sales. An IKEA Alex drawer unit is more expensive, but it offers furniture-grade quality, making its value higher for long-term use in a living space or office.
Which is better for craft storage?
It depends on the craft. For heavy supplies like reams of cardstock, large tools, or jars, the sturdier Alex drawers are a better choice. For small, lightweight, and frequently used items you need to move around your workspace - like pens, beads, paints, or yarn - a Michaels rolling cart is far more convenient.
Do you have to build both?
Yes, but to very different degrees. You must completely assemble IKEA Alex drawers from flat-packed boards, a process that can take a couple of hours. Michaels carts require very minimal assembly - usually just popping on the wheels and maybe sliding the drawers in, which takes just a few minutes.
Which is more durable?
The IKEA Alex drawers are significantly more durable. They are constructed in a way that provides stability and longevity for use as everyday furniture. Michaels carts, being mostly lightweight plastic and metal, are less robust and not designed for heavy items or rough use.
Can IKEA Alex drawers be used for makeup?
Absolutely. Alex drawers are one of the most popular storage solutions for makeup collections. Their shallow drawers are perfect for organizing palettes, cosmetics, and brushes, and the sleek design fits well in bedrooms and dressing areas.
What can you use a Michaels rolling cart for?
Their primary use is for craft supplies, but they are incredibly versatile. People use them as mobile homework stations for kids, coffee or bar carts, bathroom organizers for toiletries, or for storing baby supplies like diapers and wipes.
Can you put wheels on IKEA Alex drawers?
While not a standard feature, many people DIY this solution by adding caster wheels to the bottom of the Alex unit for added mobility. You will need to purchase the wheels separately and screw them into the base.
Where can you buy them?
Alex drawers are exclusive to IKEA and can be purchased in their stores or from their website. Storage carts and organizers from Michaels are available in their widespread retail stores and at Michaels.com.
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