Some miscellaneous thoughts on home improvement
I assembled part of the new and improved pantry today. Since my wife wasn't available to help me, I went for some basics at the local department store instead of trekking out to Ikea for some proper (though still cheap) furniture.
A two-drawer mesh organiser and a three-drawer mesh organiser. These were easy enough to place, but I found the rails on the drawers were very basic and more importantly they were so tight that if you pulled out a drawer, you would drag the whole frame out along with it, even when it was empty. I was racking my brain trying to figure out how to secure it in place without nailing or screwing anything into the pantry - eventually ended up using some surplus weights to hold down the frame. (I don't think glue would have worked).
I also got one of these wire and wood drawers. This is better because it has actual rails for the basket and it's heavy enough (and the basket is not flush with the rail enough) that the drawer doesn't stick and pull the entire frame forward when you, well, draw it. However, the wooden handles fell off immediately, which I found sort of funny.
Generally, Kmart is okay in terms of variety of items, but to date the build quality is pretty bloody awful, especially on anything with moving parts. I honestly might prefer Daiso at this point - at least the price is commensurate with the quality, thought their selection tends towards the smaller side of things. Or maybe I should try Muji?
I also got a few of these cute stackable clear containersfor cable organisation. They're not bad, especially once you label them.
I've been using a Japanese social media site called Roomclip to look at inspiration; it's like Pinterest, but focused solely on interior design. It's quite useful. Of course, everything there is only available in Japanese stores and on eCommerce sites, but there's a few international giants like Ikea and Muji represented, and you can generally find equivalents in this day and age.
One thing I'm amazed online furniture stores don't do often is let you search by dimensions. Very often I find a situation where I know the dimensions of the space I have free, and am looking for some kind of object (a drawer, a shelf, etc) I want to fit that space. But for some damn reason Ikea and Amazon (sometimes) are the only places that let you search - somewhat - by saying "Hey, I have a place X wide by Y height with Z depth, got anything for me?" - and even that isn't perfect. Very weird.
But then again, capitalism is not really about meeting the needs of the consumers; it's more about convincing the consumers to settle for what you actually have to sell them, so I guess actually helping people look for things isn't really part of that equation.