Early May, 2026
I’ve been continuing my 3D printing kick – taking on odd projects from friends and neighbors partially to cover the cost of materials, but mainly to give myself some interesting design challenges to face and overcome.
These last ones were a spice rack (easy) and a drawer organizer (surprisingly hard).
See… the spice rack is simple. I’ve got the designs down solid, and all they need at this point is for me to adjust the basic dimensions to match those of the specific kitchen where they’re being installed. Simple and easy; update a few numbers, print it out, and then do a quick assembly.
The drawer organizer, though? That was unique. It’d have been easy as anything if it was a single-setup organizer, but the neighbor in question wasn’t quite sure how she wanted to arrange it… instead of asking her for a single firm design, I took that as a fun confounding variable: Can I make a drawer organizer that’s fully adaptable?
Yes, in fact, I could.
It took a while for me to brainstorm the idea – see, I needed it to be modular, in single segment intervals. They had to be sturdy, but orientable in two dimensions. Simply doing LEGO-style walls would have been simple, but they wouldn’t have been resilient enough; they’d just fall over.
In the end, I decided on a grid, with anchor posts on each side that’re designed so that up to four walls can “radiate” outward from a center hub… while not requiring any walls to even exist for stability.
It worked beautifully, in the end, and only took a little bit of trial and error to dial in the specific sizing to allow for full modularity. Fun and challenging.
