Cinnamon Roll Clothing Organizer

Ever mess up your perfectly folded stack of clothes in a crazed quest for the perfect day's outfit? Frustrated that you can barely even see what's available in your very own dresser?

Enter.....the cinnamon roll clothing organizer.....

A cinnamon roll is a clothing item that has been rolled into a cylinder, and can be installed and removed from this organizer. Why is it effective?

• Accessibility: Cinnamon rolls are supported by an array of square dowels protruding from a backboard. This means they can be inserted and retrieved without really interacting with any other rolls.
• Visibility: Cinnamon rolls have a large and defined cross section, so you can easily tell what's available and how much.
• Efficiency: Despite being and accessible and visible, cinnamon rolls are still packed right next to each other, making the system very space efficient. In fact, I store my entire wardrobe(save dress clothes) in my organizer.

• Plank of wood that will form your backboard
• 6-8" Dowels, something like 1/2" diameter
• Epoxy resin or wood glue
• Drill with an appropriately sized bit

1) How many clothing items

I wanted to fit pretty much all my daily use clothes into this organizer. So I counted what I actually have:

• ~18 shirts
• ~10 pairs of underwear
• ~5 pairs of pants

2) Slot size

Next, figure out how big your rolls will be. I came up with two sizes, "standard" and "large". The standard slots are 2"x2" and will fit underwear and shirts on the smaller or thinner side. The large slots are 3"x3", and fit large or thick shirts and pants.

3) Number of slots and distribution

I want the length of my 2" and 3" sections to be the same. That leaves multiples of 6". So I decided on a 24" length, which allows 12 standard slots per row and 8 large slots per row. Then I went with two standard slot rows(4" high) and two large slot rows(6" high).

Therefore the overall array has 12*2=24 standard slots and 8*2=16 large slots. It is 24" wide and 10" high.

4) Number of dowels

The boundary between standard and large slots can be standard spaced dowels. This means one large row will have standard spaced dowels on one side and large spaced dowels on the other side. That's 2*(8+1)=18 dowels for the large slots, and 3*(12+1)=39 dowels for the standard, which is a total of 57 dowels. I cut each dowel to 8", and bought 4ft stock, so 10 will do. They were like a dollar each.

1) Cut to size

I started with ten 4ft dowels, and needed to cut them to 8" pieces. I did it with a ripsaw, but you can also do it with a hacksaw or possibly some strong shears. If you have a bandsaw you're not the kind of person that needs to hear from me on how to cut these anyway.

2) Round edges

The initial cut caused a lot of splinters and rough edges, which ripsaws tend to do. I rounded the ends by rubbing them against nice rough concrete ground, but only because I don't have a vise. I recommend a vise and coarse bastard file, or a sander. Or, use a cutting method that doesn't cause rough edges in the first place.

I forgot to take pictures of the finished backboard, but basically just drill holes at the correct locations.

I would recommend not drilling all the way through bc a flat bottomed well shape will make it easier to glue the dowels in. I have a hand drill and a 1/2" bit with a pointy end, so it was easier to just put a piece of wood underneath and drill all the way through each hole. Protect your ears if your drill is loud because you're gonna be hearing a lot of it!

If you're using epoxy resin, I recommend using slow cure because this might take a while. Or just do small batches at once. I had some slow cure left over from a past project, so it was pretty trivial to just mix up and start inserting dowels. You can also use wood glue; may be easier and strong enough.

One issue was that the dowels wouldn't stand up perfectly straight while curing, so I would check in every hour or two to straighten the dowels. Because the epoxy resin takes 24-48 hrs to cure, it is still somewhat malleable for the first 12 or so hours.

I ended up miscalculating the number of dowels I needed, so one large sized row is completely unaccounted for. Oh well.....

Go to town! Thanks for reading all