I’m Literally Fighting Entropy
Basically every cabinet in my kitchen is a cluttered mess. In fact, I realized recently that the cabinet where I store my spices (amongst other things) is so disorganized that I’ve just been buying duplicate spices instead of checking to see what I have first.
To stop double-buying, I decided to design some 3D printed shelves to make the spices I have more visible.
Design
My plan was to attach a few small shelves to the cabinet door so that I could have clear visibility and easy access to (most of) my spices. I took a few measurements and discovered that most of the spice containers I own are in the ballpark of 45mm on a side. Considering the width of the cabinet door, this meant I’d be able to fit about 4 spice containers per shelf. Using these measurements, I sketched out a remarkably crude drawing of what I had in mind.
After some time in Fusion I came up with the design below. I added some cutouts for command strips to mount the shelves to the cabinet door.
Installation
I printed off a single shelf, made a few small tweaks to the design after doing a test fit, and then printed off the rest of the shelves.
Here’s what the shelves look like installed on the cabinet door. I can store 16 spices on the shelves, which, conveniently, is exactly how many I have right now. Well, excluding duplicates.
Wrap-Up
Obviously, this isn’t a 100% solution to my problem. Whenever I buy more spices they’ll just start accumulating in the cabinet again. Still, it’s a welcome improvement over the non-solution I had before.
I’m trying to do more of this: small, imperfect projects that solve a problem, even if it’s a tiny one. Plus, they’re just fun to do, and a great excuse to bikeshed on new features for my website.
