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The Floor-Drobe, for "Clean but Worn" Clothes

Designed by a finance guy

By Rain Noe - July 16

in Furniture Design

What do you do with "clean-but-worn" clothes? I've often thought there ought be a furniture solution, some kind of modern-day valet.

Jonathan Thurling, who is not a designer (his day job is developing financial models for carbon credit programs) lives in a tiny apartment in London with his girlfriend. Thurling has described it as literally too small to fit a chair on which to throw clothes; as a consequence, their clothes are always on the floor. So in his spare time, he prototyped, then successfully Kickstarted his Floor-Drobe invention:

Thurling, bless his heart, did approach the design by focusing on the details that mattered to him:

"Normal hooks stretch the fabric of clothes. So while they are great for hanging clothes with string loops, they are terrible for hanging anything else. In the process of developing the Floor-Drobe®, I experimented with a number of different hook types and settled on a 9 cm curved (miniature) coat hanger. This solution not only protects your clothes while they hang but is also small enough to be discreet (as opposed to a full sized coat hanger)."

"People keep a different amount of half worn clothes handy. For example, I tend to keep about 4 items on my Floor-Drobe® (2 shirts and 2 pairs of pants). My girlfriend, however, keeps a ton of stuff, maybe 10 items at once: on the hooks, across the beams and hanging off the poles. So, that's why I designed adjustable hooks that aren't fixed onto the ladder so you can adjust as you see fit."

Thurling also says the product is durable:

"A high quality product is a non-negotiable for us. We have tried numerous samples and rejected a couple because the quality was not up to scratch. The Floor-Drobe® is not a complicated product and so should last you many years to come. The materials (steel and Acacia wood) are high quality and so expected to be durable long into the future."

I won't knock the design; Thurling has no design training, yet managed to prototype this on his own and set up production in Vietnam, using sustainably-sourced Acacia for the wood. Good on him for putting in the work, solving a problem and finding a market.

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Aidan O' Sullivan

4 months ago

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Why does the article need to be so condescending towards Thurling? At its core good design is problem solving whether you have formal design education or not. Gatekeeping design because somebody is "not a designer" isn't helpful and certainly won't encourage others to share their ideas.

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Dee An

4 months ago

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I'd be tempted to add a shelf for shoes at the base of it, since the base has to stand proud of the wall anyway.
But yeah, it looks to be a good solution. The hooks he could sell alone, since the rest of it could be easily constructed from found materials and stock parts.
The cylindrical rubber caps at the top of the uprights don't look attractive to me... Perhaps they remind me of the bottom of walking sticks? Maybe they make me think the structure is upside down? Either way, I'd consider swapping them out for some rubber balls.

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Scott Carpenter

4 months ago

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I have a Pinterest board theme for this very situation. It's basically a modern interpretation of the valet stand.
My wife always tells me to put clean-but-worn clothes back in the drawer.

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