alt.hn

2/9/2026 at 7:32:45 PM

A method and calculator for building foamcore drawer organisers

 https://capnfabs.net/posts/foamcore-would-be-a-sick-name-for-a-music-genre/

by evakhoury

2/10/2026 at 3:36:02 PM

I do a lot of free-standing "holders" from industrial (5 ply) cardboard and hot glue. Surprisingly sturdy! Made a video about this too: https://youtu.be/s-aNW3h15K0 - all of these are still in use and I made more & more complex ones too.

Seems the calculator is designed for a "collection of boxes", which I guess is a start, but when I hear "organizer" a collection of separate boxes ain't what I want. The most significant factor of making one's own is that it's 105% customized to the need, no more no less. That means usually a lot of thought between "target place bounding box" vs "bounding boxes of things the holder shall hold".

For "organize a drawer, quickly!" I got myself a couple of sets of "modular" boxes - they have little tabs on their sides so one can snap them together like lego.

by drbig

2/11/2026 at 11:03:37 AM

Your cardboard holders look cool, I'll give this a go. Thank you for sharing

by vdm

2/11/2026 at 11:51:40 AM

Pro-tip I only realized later when making much bigger ones: it's worth to pay attention to the "grain", that is the orientation of the corrugations.

Find it hard to describe, but they should go "perpendicular to the axis of load". E.g. if you have an upright wall the top and bottom edge should show the "waves"; your base (and top) plate should have the "waves" showing on the left and right edges.

Took me some time to get used to thinking about it and it makes cutting out individual pieces (a lot) more involved, but the payoff is real for big units (big as in 50 x 30 x 40 cm; no longer can you move it one-handed!).

by drbig

2/10/2026 at 4:22:25 PM

Foamcore is truly the world's best "around the house" material for quick projects. An amazing trick not used for simple boxes in the parent post, is to simply score the fold-lines of a box and then fold the foamcore into the shape you desire, instead of cutting all the edges. It makes for very fast and fun crafting.

My favorite activity I ever did with foamcore was to make a to-scale layout of an apartment my wife and I were moving into so that we could experiment with simple to-scale rectangles as stand-ins for furniture to figure out our layout.

What a wonderful material!

by lelandbatey

2/9/2026 at 7:38:59 PM

Foamed plastic seems underappreciated in the age of 3D printing. Recently I was researching foamed PVC sheets to make Raspberry Pi contraptions. Seems I'll have to buy them online, though.

by RicoElectrico

2/10/2026 at 3:25:16 PM

Check out foaming TPU filament first. Best of both worlds!

by 1970-01-01

2/10/2026 at 4:52:38 PM

Poor/clever man's Gridfinity

by xnx

2/10/2026 at 6:32:47 PM

I feel like what got lost here was a pro/con evaluation.

Pro: Your drawers are neater now.

Con: You just spent maybe 100x of the time and effort you would have spent if you had just left your drawer messy, and had to search through it.

My back of the napkin math is that you go into an average drawer once a week, and mess makes it take five seconds longer to find something than in a clean drawer. Assuming you live 20 years before the drawer falls apart, you move, etc. that's roughly 20 * 50 * 5 = 5,000 seconds.

Now, read the article and tell me what multiple of 5,000 seconds the OP put into all that custom foam.

by hungryhobbit

2/10/2026 at 10:26:03 PM

A lot of times, being organized and tidy is more about feeling good than it is about saving time.

If every time I open that drawer I'm a little frustrated, a little flustered, a little stressed, that's not just 5 seconds of "lost time" its a little bit of damage to my mood.

On the other hand, if every time I open the drawer it's all neat and organized and I can find the thing I'm looking for right away and I'm reminded of the good job I did building the organizers, that's a nice little micro-boost to my mood.

And maybe the time and effort spent figuring this out and building it and blogging about it was fun! Like a fun little hobby.

Everybody has a different temperament and different priorities, etc. Someone may look at this and think "what a waste of time". Personally, I kind of like projects like this that add a little extra satisfaction or polish to something I interact with freqently.

by jrussino

2/10/2026 at 5:38:31 PM

For finishing or to make them a little more stackable, grab a foam or mat bevel cutting tool, like https://www.amazon.com/Logan-Werks-Cutting-Straight-Bevel/dp.... There are tons of 3D-printable cutters out there as well.

Cut the same angle on the top inside and bottom outside and you can stack shallow foamcore bins in deeper drawers. Lots of other handy uses for an adjustable bevel cutter and foamcore boards.

by starkparker

2/10/2026 at 7:12:07 PM

I'm deep in the Gridfinity rabbit hole but this seems a good compromise since my 3d printer broke.

by silveira