T-Shirt Filing Hemnes Drawer

Materials: Hemnes Dresser (or any dresser with deep drawers), metal rods

Description: I’€™ve always thought that storing t-shirts and tank tops in drawers was inefficient and messy “if you stack them on top of each other, you’ll end up with a huge, disorganized pile. Plus you can’™t see them all at the same time and you always end up looking for the one at the bottom. So I thought about storing them vertically. I tried that, but unfortunately, the mess was still there. I liked it better than the stack though, because I could see all my clothes.

That’s when it hit me: we could design some sort of filing system. It would basically be two long rods (acting as rails) and then shorter rods perpendicular to the longer ones, where the t-shirts would be folded over. I thought the drawers from the Hemnes dresser were especially suited for this because they’re quite deep.

You can see that the system consists of two towel rods screwed to the drawer sides and more metal rods perpendicular to the long ones. Like in a filing cabinet, you can shift the short rods along the long ones so you’€™re able to shift through your t-shirts.

Here’s the how-to:

1. Measure the inside of your drawer face (for the long towel rods)
2. Decide the measurement of your short rods (the distance between the long towel rods); I decided I wanted to fit two tank tops on top of each rod, so I based my measurement on that)
3. Buy towel rods of your desired measurement (if they don’t sell your exact measurements, you can cut them down to size with a hand saw) and install them inside the drawer using screws (I recommend you save one of the screws until after you insert the short rods – so screw three of them and leave one for later)
4. Buy thinner metal rods (I think they sell them in rolls). You’ll need to add about an inch and a half or two on each side (so three-four inches) to the measure you obtained in 1. to obtain your total measure. Cut them to size. (So, to be clear: the distance between the two long rods + aprox. 3.5 inches = measurement at which to cut the short rods)
Using heavy duty pliers, twist the edges of the short rods to give each edge sort of a ⊂ shape, so each rod will look something like this: ⊂--⊃ (all joined together, obviously)
5. Insert the short rods into place (you’€™ll need to maneuver them slightly!) and you’re ready to use your brand new t-shirt filing system.

We installed this more than a year ago, and I’m happy to report my drawer is still as tidy and organized as the initial pic I posted.

See more of the t-shirt filing system.

~ Ainhoa