Self-sorting (sorta) bin - HOME SWEET HOME

Wow, I'm kind of amazed by the response this got. Obviously I hit a wide-open need in the crafting community! Thanks for all the enthusiasm and kind words.

Answers to a couple of excellent questions:

So far there hasn't been a problem with stuff piling up in a tangle under each opening and getting caught when the drawer is pulled out. This is probably just because it's only been in use for six months and hasn't accumulated enough material yet, but I think that it'll take a while for that to become a problem because each time you pull out one of the drawers it shakes the contents a bit and spreads it around. The arrangement of the openings isn't random -- I deliberately had screws fall into the largest drawer, for instance, because they're what accumulates the most, and washers go to the smallest because they take up the least space.

Sloping the drawers away from the point where the material falls is an interesting idea, and would certainly help spread the contents. Gravity isn't on your side there, so it'd be necessary to make some sort of latch to keep each drawer closed, but that wouldn't be too hard and could make for fun 'automatic drawer action'. Or if the drawers were constructed differently they could still slide out level but have the bottom of each angled toward the front.

The row of deeper, narrow drawers would be easier to set up, and the sorting action would be identical, but of course you'd lose the easy access to the contents that flat tray-like drawers give you. I first thought of making the drawers pull out the front, but I couldn't see any way to avoid having them stack in an uneven triangular pattern, and that didn't seem very attractive. The side-action is tidier-looking, though the blank front face bothers me. I haven't figured out what to use that space for.

Carving out the openings on top wasn't too time-consuming, except for the threads on the screw and bolt shapes. Once I figured out a technique, though, even those weren't too bad. I hadn't thought about its resemblance to a preschool shape-matching toy, but I'm sure our long-forgotten memories of childhood playtime are what makes us put everything in the right slots!

As for making them to sell on Etsy, it looks like I'd have a hard time keeping up with demand just from the Craftster crowd. I'm quite content to let someone copy the design and manufacture them in China so I can buy a couple more for my own home. A tiny one would be brilliant for jewellery findings, and a bigger one for beads. (I'm sure I'm not the only one who has boxes and bags of beads and stuff waiting "to be sorted".) Another tiny one for sewing pins, maybe. And I may be crazy, but wouldn't this work for cutlery, too?

Wulf