All the Stuff that’s Fit to Print (A Pop-Up Update)

Most Americans accumulate stuff over time, and far too much of that stuff ends up at yard sales or waste bins. Over the years I’ve bought my share of produce that wilted, books that sat (and continue to sit) unread, and various things from Target that found a place inside my shopping cart but not my home.

But on the opposite end of the “stuff spectrum” are those things we use continuously, whose return on investment is infinitely higher than what we originally paid for them. For me, I think of the cordless Milwaukee Impact Driver I’ve had for 8 years now and have probably used a few thousand times, and the pair of Bose over-ear headphones I used so often that the leather padding for the ears had worn down to a nub (I have recently replaced these with a new pair that features longer battery—and presumably ear pad—life). Then there is my 2022 Ford Escape PHEV, which has almost 55,000 miles on it . . . this is about the point during my usual tenure of car ownership when I start fantasizing about my next ride, but I love this vehicle so much that I was almost as relieved about it surviving getting jackknifed on the freeway over the summer as I was about surviving myself (though I’m sure my family would disagree).

The newest entry to this list is my FlashForge Adventurer 5M 3D printer. I bought it almost on a lark when it was available for a deep discount on Amazon and I needed to create some custom wiring panels for my workshop, but during the past several weeks I’ve already burned through over a half dozen rolls of filament. I have since become comfortable enough on TinkerCad to cobble together a new design whenever I want to make something new (which is often). But while I am already lamenting the absence of features one finds in higher-end 3D printers, the Adventurer 5M does the fundamentals well enough that I am in no rush to upgrade it.

Although I have made a lot of things (including many failed prototypes) over the past couple of months, the main inspiration for my 3D printing thus far has been the pop-up camper. Or, specifically, a small but invaluable piece of it: the cabinet drawers.

Reinventing the Wheel (or just the stuff at The Container Store)

When we first opened the camper ourselves, we did not have a lot of time to poke around. The sun was setting, a winter storm was on its way, and we were nowhere near ready to fix the bed. Almost as soon as we ripped the queen-size bed out of its cocoon, we had to jam it back in. Before we closed it up, though, I pulled out three drawers (including two from the kitchen) and removed them from the camper.

Weeks later, the drawers are still sitting in our house. However, each one contains a lot of organizational scaffolding and a wide variety of 3D printed sub-containers.

My main priorities for the drawers were to clean them out, to squeeze as many different things as possible into each one while making them user-friendly, and to try to prevent those things from jostling around too much during transport. I took care of the first priority on day one with some cleaning wipes and a roll of shelf liner from the dollar store. But the other two goals have consumed much more time, as well as dozens of hours of printing and a few rolls of PLA filament.

Fitting as much as possible into a drawer is simple enough. Just ask our kitchen junk drawer, which has so many things stuffed into it that roughly half the time I try to close it, I need to shift a few things around so that it can clear the cabinet lip. I did not want to take this haphazard approach to the camper, however—I spend enough of my ADHD existence looking for things at home to want to waste my time doing this while on vacation. So, everything we store in it needs to have a home.

Moreover, we want our camper to be as “plug and play” (to use a computing term) as possible. If it’s 3pm on a Friday afternoon and we feel like taking an impromptu trip, we don’t want to spend the rest of the day tracking down supplies and gear, only for us to roll into our space long after Clementine’s bedtime. We want to be able to pack some clothes, buy some food, hitch the wagons, and then hit the road. Therefore, I want to be able to store as many things that we need as possible so that we won’t have to remember them. Any item that is already in the camper is an item we won’t have to remember to bring.

The key to this, so far as I could tell, was vertical space. Whenever we look at a drawer, we visualize it first in terms of horizontal space, and then in terms of whether or not something will fit vertically. For our camper drawers, I wanted to stack things we use more frequently on top of things we don’t (but still need).

I also wanted to maximize horizontal space by making bespoke partitions for our various things. For instance, rather than scouring IKEA and Daiso for utensil holders that would fit our spoons and forks with room to spare, I wanted to print my own. Our eating utensils each have their own little boxes, which are large enough to make retrieving one easy but economical enough to free up a little additional space. These little pockets of space soon added up to make bigger spaces for additional things. I also wanted to store some things horizontally that would usually be stored vertically, such as wooden spoons and chef’s knives. This required framing those things out in such a way that they would “stack” together horizontally without scattering after the camper hits its first pothole.

After several weeks of trial and error, experimentation, and looking way too “intently” (my wife’s word) at a kitchen drawer for concerning lengths of time, I’ve finished Camper Kitchen Drawer 1.0. Below is a photo:

Starting on the top left corner and moving counter-clockwise, I have a wooden box from Daiso that has become a miniature cooking utensils drawer. It holds a variety of tools, from bag clips and a lighter to a small whisk and tongs. This box takes up most of the vertical space of the drawer, so nothing is stored underneath. Next, though, you will find a three-tiered stack: a bespoke eating utensils organizer, a tray containing a small cutting board (with included paring knife) and scissors, and the camper manual. To access the cutting board and scissors, one can pick up the utensils organizer using the retractable green handle (which uses barrel hinges to swing it from its storage position inside the spoons tray to its closed position as a handle). If we need the owner’s manual for some reason, we can also remove the cutting board tray. .

On the right side of the drawer I have a flashlight, a variety of wooden spoons and spatulas, a large set of tongs, and a chef’s knife. I also made some space for candles, dish soap, and water bottle cleaner tabs. The spoons are held together with a grooved stand and a slotted bar for the handles, while the tongs and knife have large receiver boxes at either tip. Note the latest addition on the right: a wooden spoon container with a magnetic back that can be mounted onto the side of the kitchen cabinet (which will have a large magnetic strip attached). You doubtlessly noticed the banner picture for this post, which is what this looks like on the other side . .

As for the other two drawers, I took a similar (if slightly less elaborate) approach. Our narrow kitchen drawer contains Keurig coffee pods, tea bags (with three separate bays to allow for different varieties), small red tins for spices, a salt and pepper shaker set, etc. Meanwhile, the other drawer has been reserved for reference, electronic, camping, and personal care products. I also included a travel journal (appropriately named “Van Life”), a pop-up camper travelogue and “how-to” book, and a set of colored pencils and markers in case any of us want to draw something.

You can download the .stl file for my “Red Tin Box Row” here: https://www.tinkercad.com/things/dljqw3D3TKD-red-tin-box-row

And here’s the link for my Spice Row (including Salt and Pepper Shaker Set): https://www.tinkercad.com/things/gzpzYWrLugl-food-drawer-condiment-and-spice-row

A Work in Progress

I hope that this combination of organized stacking and customized fittings will survive the road as well as the rigors of our family using everything and then remembering to put everything back when the trip is through. Although this has yet to be battle-tested, I am happy with how this turned out and look forward to using it on our inaugural trip.

Nonetheless, I was both surprised and mortified by the amount of time I invested into designing and laying out these three drawers. Even though I was excited and had virtually nothing else to do (at least with respect to the camper) for the first week, it certainly did not portend an expedited timeline for the rest of the project.

More problematic in the long term, though, is this system’s inevitable impermanence. As we start to get our camper “sea legs” and figure out what we use and what we don’t, plus those things we need often and did not think to buy early on, I will no doubt have to change this system and print a bunch of new things. And I will be honest . . . I’m not excited about that!

In any case, I think this is at the very least a great starting point, and perhaps it will give others who are starting (or dreaming) of their own pop-up camper, RV, or tiny house projects a template for their own limited storage spaces. Of course, most tiny homes do not have the space required to house a 3D printer. However, having access to one will do wonders for anyone trying to maximize limited spaces, both outside and inside their homes. As we all continue to accumulate more stuff, perhaps we can move away from purchasing bigger houses and renting out expensive storage lockers, and toward maximizing those spaces we already have. And by extension, we can focus less on acquiring stuff we don’t need and won’t use, and more on giving those items we use, value, and treasure a proper home.