Quirky, the design collective whose products are often true to its name, has melded milk crate shelving, Lego blocks and hipster design to create Crates, a modular shelving system with dorm rooms in mind.
The crates themselves are 14-inch plastic cubes with one open side and Swiss cheeselike holes in the others. Those holes serve a purpose, allowing you to put legs or casters on the crates and to use couplers to stack the crates into an elaborate piece of furniture. The holes also accommodate wiring, making these a natural for storing electronics.
The genius of the system is the array of accessories that let you customize the system. There are drawers, pegs for hangers, and cork and dry eraser boards that mount to the side. There is also a butcher block game board, a cable management system and a cushion that turns the crate into a seat.
The crates snap together in a Lego-like system. In a test, the fiberglass-re inforced polypropylene crates seemed sturdy and assembled easily. It was much less trouble than the average Ikea product. Sorry, Borgsjo. With a little ingenuity you can assemble a media center or computer desk.
The crates cost $20 apiece. The accessories range in price from for a book that hangs from the side, to $30 for the seat cushion.
The one real kink to ease of use was finding the crates. They are supposed to be at Target stores, OfficeMax and Staples. I went to several of these stores in my area and could find nary a crate. Office Max does sell them online, and Quirky said it would add them to its Web site
Although they were built with the dorm room in mind, I suspect they could capably suit more grown-up interiors, too.
