How to: I Turned a Storage Bench Into My Cat's Litter Box

Since 2017, my husband and I have been the proud owners of a sweet tuxedo cat. Unfortunately, that also means we're the not-so-proud owners of her litter box.

Any cat owner will tell you that having a box filled with (I'm sorry) feces and urine isn't exactly great for your home decor. Some solutions I've seen online include putting it in a guest bathroom, a spare closet, or in your garage, but as a New York City dweller where every inch of space is crucial, those options were not available to us.

And while self-cleaning litter boxes might be all the rage, they didn't solve my storage issue.

So that led to hours spent searching for an elegant solution. I wanted something with storage, that could double as a piece of furniture and would still give her enough room to do her business.

I had a ready-made side table meant for this exact purpose, but her litter got everywhere since she would jump out of the hole, scattering those dusty little kernels. Putting a tracking pad down in front of it helped, but it was very obvious that this was a litter box and an eyesore when I entered the room.

But I had an idea. If I could find a long and deep enough storage bench and cut a hole in the side, it would make her a runway to track the litter before she hopped out. There would even be enough space for all of her accoutrement, like extra litter boxes and scooping equipment.

The option I found was deep and wide enough for a litter box. The only problem was it was over $700 plus shipping and taxes.

As someone not handy enough to build something similar myself, I saved for months and waited for the bench to go on sale, but no dice. In the end, I not only splurged on the long bench I originally spotted, but a short bench to go with it to make ourselves a dining nook. (Yes, we really did eat here, and no, there was no smell.)

Before we built the bench, we cut a hole big enough for our cat to climb in and out of. Once we built the bench, we lined it with odor-absorbing trash bags — the key, in my opinion, to why this doesn't make our home smell.

While this might be the most divisive thing I've ever put on TikTok, we still use this bench all the time. I love that it's a functional part of our decor and has storage so we don't waste precious closet space on housing extra kitty litter.

Most importantly, our cat seems to like it, too.