Organizing my kitchen drawers

I love to cook, and I also love to organize. Moving to New York City started a gradual obsession with figuring out how I could have a large plethora of kitchen tools in a relatively small space.

Earlier this year, I had been low-key not satisfied with how the kitchen was organized, and then I came across this video from YouTuber Scott Yu-Jan. He used 3D printing to both beautifully organize and optimize his desk drawer, giving him quick access to the things he needs day-to-day:

So far, I had only really used 3D printing for my various hydroponic projects. For whatever reason it hadn't really occurred to me to use it in other aspects of my life as well. I decided to take inspiration from the video and 3D print exactly what I needed to organize my kitchen.

Background

My apartment kitchen isn't tiny by New York standards, but it isn't exactly huge either. To increase counter space, I have this kitchen island/cart duo that I bought a few years ago:



Floor plan not to scale

The kitchen island drawer and a small drawer below the cabinets is all I have in terms of drawer space. Between these two drawers I had divided both the daily use utensils and a variety of kitchen gadgets that don't fit well anywhere else. Since a lot of the utensils and tools I have are oddly shaped, things inevitably ended up piled haphazardly in the drawer, despite my attempt at using organizers. There was always a mild sense of frustration when I was either looking for a less-frequently used tool or trying to make sure everything stacks just right so I could simply close the drawers.



Initial designs and lessons

The other main takeaway I had from the YouTube video was the utilization of vertical space within a drawer. In adapting the approach to my kitchen drawers, I decided on the rough idea of hiding away less-used utensils and tools underneath the utensils used daily (chopsticks, spoons, forks, and knives). As with all my projects, I forged ahead with the basic idea in my head and figured it out as I went.

To start, I took everything out of the kitchen drawer and placed the utensils roughly where I wanted them. Since the back part of the drawer was hidden under the top of the island, I replicated the dimensions using paper, laid out everything on top, took a picture, and imported the picture to trace in OnShape. I'm still a beginner at CAD, so I ended up winging the dimensions a bit.



Dixie didn't understand the assignment

I started printing the pieces from left to right, beginning with two stacked chopstick holders: the bottom would hold the takeout chopsticks that kept cluttering the drawer, and the top would hold the actual chopsticks. To save plastic, the bottom holder was basically just a rectangle with no bottom.

When I exported the STL file to print the first piece, I realized that most of my designs so far were too large for the 3D printer. I have an Ender 3 S1 Pro from Creality, and the bed size is 220×220×270mm. Since I print pieces with a skirt around them, this means I can't actually print anything longer than ~7.5 inches. I had to go back to my designs and slice everything in half so I could print each half separately and then epoxy them together afterward.



After finishing with the chopstick holders, I started picking less-frequently used items to hide underneath the other utensils, such as bag clips, straw scrubs, a bread lame, piping bags, and more. My sister would often find me on a weekend mornings just staring at the open drawer, deep in thought, wondering what else I could hide away on the bottom layer of the drawer.

I also learned a lot more about using print settings as part of the design. CAD was only half the story - when exporting the CAD file to the printer (I use Cura), you can fiddle with settings like the support structure (if any), infill pattern, and even whether you wanted to skip the bottom layer to save plastic. Much of this was learned through trial and error. I keep all my messed up prints in a bag next to my printer in the hopes that one day someone in New York City has an economic way of recycling used PLA.



I have trouble with bed adhesion sometimes...

Refactoring the layout

About 3 weeks into the whole process, my drawer looked like the below. However, I couldn't make up my mind on how I wanted the rest of the drawer to look.



When my sister caught me staring at the drawer in consternation one morning, she suggested just hanging up the measuring spoons since they have holes on the ends.

I took a detour and traced two Pikachu images in Onshape to 3D print. I used pliers to bend paper clips into a hook shape, and epoxied the paper clips in between the Pikachus and back pieces that I had also printed. I used foam tape to then stick them to the wall, and divided the measuring spoons between the two hooks:



My sister also gave me feedback that the straws were both hard to take out and difficult to see if there were straws inside to begin with. I decided to abandon the holders for the smaller forks and spoons and refactor the layout a bit. I rotated the smaller utensils 90 degrees, and decided to separate the soup spoons from the straws (placement to be determined). I also printed the small utensil holders individually, since separated they actually fit on the print bed and I wouldn't have to epoxy anything. With this new design, I realized I could also utilize the vertical space underneath the metal utensils and pack even more into the drawer:



Left: re-working the layout; Right: re-working the layout again after printing some of the holders.

After printing the utensil holders, I still couldn't figure out how to fit the big soup spoons in the drawer without using a lot of plastic. My sister took pity on me and suggested we move the soup spoons out of the drawer and into some vertical holders that we had, since we don't use these spoons that often. With those out of the way, I could finally finish the design.

Final design

Because the space utilization was much more efficient now, I actually ended up with leftover space after putting away everything that was originally in the kitchen island drawer. Since the drawer organizers relied on being tightly packed to avoid sliding around, I needed to find more things to organize into the drawer (I know, this is the opposite problem I started with). Some examples of the additions and changes that I made:

• I added holders for a pizza cutter and mandolin blades, which went underneath the smaller metal utensils I had refactored earlier.
• I made holders for a wine opener and wine stopper
• I designed a flat holder for the straws for easier access, and had them fit on top of the wine opener and stopper
• I did trigonometry for the first time in years so that I could angle my bench scraper just right so the drawer could still close
• I added an "everything else" holder that went behind the smaller utensils. This was basically just so that the utensils wouldn't slide around as the drawer was opened and closed.

Below is the final design and layout for everything that I 3D printed:



Blue: Visible from top, Gray: Hidden below

My sister wanted easier access to the hand towels we use to wipe the counter down, so I left the bottom right corner empty for them. The middle of the drawer is also empty, but everything is so tightly packed now that I didn't feel like wasting plastic to print generically rectangular holders. This is how the drawer looks like now:



Left: default state, Right: top layer removed

Because I ended up taking things from other places so that I could tightly pack this drawer, I ended up going on an organizing spree for other parts of my kitchen. Here are some before and after shots, just for fun:



Kitchen island drawer



Cabinet drawer that I took things from. I still don't know what I should put here, but there's more space now!



Left: A shelf that constantly annoyed me. Right: Hanging up more tools to utilize the space better

I learned a lot about leaning into vertical space more and designing around physical constraints. Suffice to say I'm never done organizing, but this is a good enough break point to write a blog post about it 🙂