Kitchen drawer divider becomes iPhone 4 car clip

Materials: 1 Rationell drawer divider set, 1 T'nB iPhone car kit, Warm glue, disc cutter, model kit paint (anthracite, black, ...), 1 business card, strong rubber bands, small piece of black fabric or felt, an afternoon of time

Description: This hack started out as an attempt to create a minimalistic iPhone 4 clip for my car because I was tired of the ugly and fat T'nB holder.

Step 1: Keep only the 2 vent clips of the T'nB holder.

Step 2: Take the plastic clip sides of 2 of the small intersections of the Rationell set (this takes the most effort of the whole hack) and cut them in half, keeping the straight clip sides. Trim the inner bits as far back as possible.

Step 3: Put both clips on opposite side of the iPhone 4 protecting it with a business card. Use rubber bands to keep them in to place. Notice the space between the 2 pieces. This is important to keep the clip flexible!

Step 4: Fill the back of the pieces with hot glue from a glue gun until slightly overfilled. (The glue shrinks when cooling down, which is perfect for setting tension.)

Step 5: Allow to cool down on your iPhone until the glue is no longer transparent.

Step 6: Trim the round bits of the 2 T'nB vent clips to fit in between the 2 trimmed back internal pieces of the Rationell clips (try fitting them as on the images, it will not work. Trim as much necessary.)

Step 7: Use a soldering iron to soften the glue where the clips should fit and push them in. Use the soldering iron to smoothen the glue surface. Allow to cool down.

Step 8: Glue some fabric to the inside of the clip. I used 1mm thick felt and scraped/burned off half of the thickness because 1/2 mm is enough.

Step 9: Paint the clip with model kit paint to match the colour of your car dash. I used anthracite.

Done.

My iPhone clip fits my dashboard vent perfectly. The iPhone cannot fall trough because the tension of the shrunk glue and flexibility is perfect and is kept in by the volume buttons as an extra security.

I like mine.
Have fun!

I've added a link to a gallery with all images.

~  Steven Pauwels (aka @stenito), Belgium

Cat safe planter

Materials: Rationell Variera, Kardemumma, wire, plants

Description: Why only use your Rationell Variera for plastic bags in the kitchen? I hang it on my wall in the living room. Now my cats can't reach the plants in it. I also put one of my speakers it.

For the upper plant I made a sort of a rack out of wire so it don't flatten the one below.

The pots for the plants I've used are the smallest Kardemumma, they exactly fits.

~ Marinka

Plastic Bag Trash Receptacle

Materials: Rationell, hacksaw, epoxy (optional)

Description: This little hack turns a Rationell trash receptacle into an interior cabinet trash holder that can reuse plastic grocery bags.

I used a hacksaw blade to cut at the red lines. Originally, I tried a utility knife but found the plastic was too brittle and had a tendency to suddenly split.

The plastic bag handles hook onto the little "nubs" left on each side and the handles feed into the little triangles at the top.

By cutting away at the body, it allows the bag to expand to hold much more. Optionally, I laid a little epoxy along some of the plastic bends to strengthen it up a bit.

Install it inside a cabinet and start reusing all those plastic trash bags you accumulate at the grocery.

~ Jeff Yu, Naperville, IL

Shoe cupboard

Materials: Faktum, Rationell, Abstrakt

Description: Where to do go with all my shoes? We used the empty space underneath the stairs to build a shoe cupboard from kitchen elements, and added a shelf and doors on the top to make space for boots. It holds three pairs of shoes per drawer.

~ Anne Vogt, Zurich, Switzerland

RATIONELL Retrofit into an old kitchen

Materials: Rationell drawers, laser level, drill, existing kitchen cabinet doors

Description: I installed 3 drawers with standard NEXUS fronts/covers in my existing kitchen cabinets; then I decided I could use all my existing (hardwood) doors so I drilled holes to attach Rationell drawers and metal bar.

If you plan on using IKEA FRONTS (nexus)

1. Measure your cabinet width, mine was 8 mm wider than Ikea standard so I had to...

2. Attach two widener boards (4mm wide each) on each side of each rail to adjust for width. Be super-careful so that everything is level and exactly aligned. Even a few millimeters of unleveled rail offset will make drawers not slide well.

If you want to reuse your own fronts, in addition to the above:

1. For double doors, stick them together with metal clips drilled along both doors. Skip this step for single doors.

2. Take an Ikea drawer front and measure where all the holes go, replicate on doors being super careful not to drill through... be carefull and drill slowing checking until you can easily insert the either the screw or the metal bar.

That's all. We managed to get slick drawers into our old kitchen!

~ Andres Torrubia, Spain