And we mean quick 'n dirty. For every finely polished shop solution is an equally functional, nasty-looking one that you quickly bang out because you need it. And if there was a museum filled with people's ad-hoc shop creations from around the world, I'd be there once a month.

The Los Angeles-based crafter behind the Cheltenham Road blog needed someplace to store his drill bits. Being numbers-challenged—"I keep thinking if I just concentrated I could remember that 7/32nds was smaller than 15/64ths," he writes—he wanted something that would not only keep the bits in size order, but let him quickly know which bit to grab while pre-drilling for a particularly-sized screw or dowel.

Sure, it's just a 2x4 with hastily-drilled holes and pencil marks on it, sure it looks like it will tip over, but I like that it looks like he made it in fifteen minutes and it basically works. "It's already proven to be a big time and stress saver," he writes.