We are used to thinking that a tidy home is one in which everything has its own place. But maybe the point isn’t having fewer objects, but rather finding a way to live alongside the ones that tell us who we are. It is from this idea that “Make Room for What You Love” takes off, IKEA’s new platform dedicated to home organization, launched with the photographic project “Belli Organizzati” (“Beautifully Organized”). The initiative is built on insights from the “Store & Organize” study, carried out by IKEA to explore Italians’ relationship with organizing domestic spaces and with the objects that are part of their everyday lives.

The results paint a picture that is fairly far from that of the perfectly organized home. According to the research, 87% of Italians say they have at least one area of the home that is hard to keep tidy. The most interesting figure, however, comes from what Italians say they actually want: 55% prefer a lived-in, informal home, while only 22% genuinely identify with a minimalist approach. Tidiness, then, does not necessarily seem to coincide with the absence of objects, but with the possibility of making them coexist within the domestic space.

The research also shows just how much clutter has become part of everyday life. Six out of ten Italians have a box or drawer where objects end up when they don’t know where else to put them, while 46% admit to having shifted clutter from one room to another before guests arrive. These are small, familiar gestures that IKEA uses to capture a real home, very different from the immaculate interiors we often see depicted.

And then there are the things we choose not to put away. 88% of Italians keep objects for their sentimental value: photographs, keepsakes, collections, musical instruments and objects tied to important moments continue to take up space precisely because that space has meaning.

This is where the concept of organization shifts perspective, it’s no longer just about finding a place for things, but about deciding how we want to live alongside what we own. The data on space points in the same direction: 39% of Italians, if they had more space, would choose to leave it empty, as if having more space didn’t necessarily mean filling it, but gaining a little extra room to actually live in one’s home.

From this reflection comes “Belli Organizzati”, the photographic project dedicated to FRAKTA, the famous blue IKEA bag that turns 30 this year. IKEA’s research into how it gets reused shows that 65% of those who have owned or used it have given it, at least once, a function different from its original one. So FRAKTA moves from grocery shopping to house moves, all the way to the most personal and creative uses.

The project brings together ten real situations shared by people, photographed by Salvatore Matarazzo, a street photographer who brings vivid colors, bold light and a language close to fashion photography into the shots. FRAKTA thus becomes something more than a simple bag: an everyday object that changes function depending on who is using it and that, precisely through this reuse, ends up telling the story of habits, passions and different ways of living.
In the end, making room doesn’t necessarily mean getting rid of something. Sometimes it simply means creating enough space so that what we love can stay.