Firstly, these organization cubes were sent to me by shoplet, and the info that you see here are all of my own opinion. They did not pay me (other than to send me these pens) to say what I am about to say..
Organization may not be my forte, but when given the opportunity to have a pen storage cube and to corral all my random loose clips and washi tape I was certainly game. Anything to make my messy desk a bit less messy. When I got the package I quickly opened the container. Inside were 4 organization cubes: a desk cube, a two drawer cube organizer, desk Cube with X-Divider, and a 4 drawer desk cube. Below you can see my monitor on top of a shelf and below the shelf sits all 4 cubes.
Here are some close ups of the cubes (2 per picture) The left picture shows the 4 drawer desk cube, and the X-divider cube. While the right picture shows the 2 drawer and the plain cube.
The boxes sit comfortably underneath my Ikea Shelf where I rest my monitor. They basically fit quite well and there is a small gap but they basically take up the entire space underneath. I was using this area to store pens and ink samples anyway so moving my inks to the side a bit works for me. These allow me to see what I have without having to dig through an unorganized box or container -- the pens were all sitting in a take out container (yes I am ashamed to admit this).
The 4 drawer one is suppose to hold odds and ends like paperclips, bulldog clips, rubber bands etc. As you can see mine seems a bit sparse -- mostly because I dont quite know where all my clips went. The "X" divider box is suppose to help you organize pens and hilighters. As you can see in the above picture, they hold quite a bit of the Sakura Gelly pens -- sadly not all of my pens are in there yet (I've got a bunch at work). Mine is also holding index cards that I use for studying. The 2 drawer organization box however, is quite full. Currently I'm using it to store 3 tins of book darts, 1 box of moo cards for the dragon boat club and some odds and ends in the top drawer. My budding washi collection is in the bottom drawer and i forget what i put in the back. The plain box i've just put in my "sets" of pens, there's also an ipod and a random pen bag in there. While they take up a LOT of space underneath my computer monitor -- i believe it helps with me being able to store everything so that I can now find things and everything is not a jumbled mess.
There was 1 slight mishap though, I left them on the steps to take upstairs and one of the boxes did tumble down the wooden stairs and so in 1 corner of 1 of the boxes the edge did get crumpled a bit -- not unheard of for plastic boxes like these so i'm not upset that it is slightly damaged more for the fact that i accidentally kicked it off the step (I should have just picked it up and walked it upstairs...). These are not fragile by any means -- but apparently a tumble down 1 flight of stairs on a wooden surface around the edges will damage the edge slightly -- but no cracks in the organizer.
What could make these better? Well obviously these are all made of plastic, making these boxes out of post consumer recycled plastic would make the world a better place, right? So incorporating some recycled materials into these would have been nice.
Where to Purchase?
- Big Box Stores (Google brought up some)
- Shoplet
- Desk Cube (4 drawer): $13.20
- X-Divider: $11.10
- Two Drawer: $14.85
- Desk Cube: $7.64
- Desk Cube (4 drawer): $13.20
- X-Divider: $11.10
- Two Drawer: $14.85
- Desk Cube: $7.64
