Last Friday, Lifehacker posted a list of their Top Ten Ikea Mods, and over the next few days, we'll be sharing some of our favorites.

First up, this how-to on embedding a scrap & work bowl into a pre-fab counter or butcher block station...

According to Lifehacker: "Rachael Ray espouses the time-saving and clean-making convenience of the "garbage bowl," a container you shove all your scraps, rinds, small messes, and anything else destined for the trash or compost heap instead of running over to it. If you agree, or tend to make a lot of salads or mixed dishes, embedding a stainless steel bowl into your counter or a wheeled butcher cart might make a lot of sense."

This seems like a brilliant idea to us, and though this project requires a bit of tool work (most of us don't have routers laying around the house), everything required can be easily rented by the day at most chain and local hardware stores.

The project essentially involves two rounds of routing: one to remove a section of the board large enough for the bowl to rest in, and a second to make sure the lip of the bowl sits flush with the the surface of the counter. Beyond some simple measuring and rudementary tool skills, that's really all that's required! Total cost? About $90, $80 of which is the cart itself.

All photos taken from Esoterica's Flickr