I love finding fantastic design details in small, humble objects. This one is cheap, too: My wife picked up these small parts organizers for just $1.75 each at Daiso.
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Unlike most organizers of this type, which have one lid hinged at the back, this design has two lids—one for each side–that are hinged in the center.
These lids can be swung open to a full 180 degrees, at which point they rest in place.
This allows you to leave one side open, for operations where you’re constantly drawing parts from it. (With the standard plastic organizers of this type, the poor-quality living hinges never stay open, and always want to close on your finger.)
As mentioned earlier there are lids on each side.
You’ve probably noticed that the barrel-style hinge protrudes from the top surface.
That’s a feature, not a bug. The cases have a corresponding cavity in the bottom of them.
That allows the cases to nest perfectly.
Those features aren’t even the best part. I’ll flip the case over so you can see the underside.
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Do you see that? The insides of the outer edges of the compartments are freaking radiused, in two axes.
That means when you stick your finger in there to fish out a tiny part…
…it’s super-easy to isolate the part and slide it up along the radius, so you can grab it without using tweezers.
I mean, come on! Who pays this kind of attention to detail in such a humble, inexpensive object?!?
Daiso (or Daiso’s buyers), that’s who. Daiso is a Japanese chain of 100-yen stores–the equivalent, or maybe the predecessor, to America’s dollar stores or the UK’s £1 shops–that is known for selling startlingly high-quality goods. They have nearly 100 stores in America; and while shipping the goods here has raised the price from ¥100 (roughly USD $0.76) to $1.75, the quality of the goods is leagues beyond the garbage you find in our dollar stores.
Sadly, though Daiso has an online shop, this particular organizer is nowhere to be found on the site (my wife found them in one of their physical stores). Perhaps that’s no surprise; the company name, Daiso, means “big warehouse” in Japanese, and the brand reportedly stocks over 100,000 SKUs.
Source: core77