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Rain's Weekly Design Minutiae: Making Card Catalogs Into Better Organizers

The return of CNC OCD

By Rain Noe - March 17, 2017

in Digital Fabrication

My life is a constant battle with clutter. On a daily basis I try and fail to organize the plethora of objects required for working and living. I spend way more time searching for things than finding things.

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The card catalogs I've acquired over the years have helped tremendously. Confining objects of specific categories inside each labeled drawer means less time spent searching, and I love being able to pull the drawers out to tote them over to where they're needed.

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However, the thing about card catalog drawers is that they're lousy at organizing anything besides cards.

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Absent integrated subdividers, I find myself compulsively collecting little boxes and containers I come across that I can use to keep things separate inside the drawers. This creates more clutter as now I have a box of boxes I'm hanging onto.

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And those little boxes are never quite the right size. I tend to go through a lot of batteries for the studio and other stuff, and look at the disaster that drawer has become:

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So now I say, no more. Since I have access to a desktop CNC mill I have no excuse. So I spent ten minutes with a pair of digital calipers to get the average diameters of different battery sizes, then spent another 20 minutes creating a pattern in CAD. Then I grabbed a scrap of plywood and put the machine to work:

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Itch scratched.

And now everything's better. For this one drawer, at least. I'll have to tackle the other 29 when I find time.

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Frederick Fasola

7 years ago

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Absurdly satisfying... As an architect i always wondered if our profession causes the OCD, or simply attracts people with a predisposition...

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Alex Netz

7 years ago

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Well done! U even bevelled the edges, which would make it easier to place them. Nice

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Kierian Cunningham

7 years ago

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Did you organize the battery by expiration date? Or perhaps by brand? Maybe even color or battery type.

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Eric Strebel

7 years ago

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Ahhh, this is pretty clever! good idea.

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