What do You Think About Vertical Drawers?

I’m on a new mission to clean and declutter my workspace and storage areas. Once the dust eventually clears, it will finally be time for me to re-evaluate my storage and organizational solution.

I recently discovered Rousseau’s vertical drawers, and whether or not that particular brand suits my needs, I’m drawn to their designs.

My plan has been to build cabinets, at least for basement storage where I could never get steel cabinets down the stairs. The idea was to have horizontal drawers for floor-to-waist storage, and traditional shelves to satisfy bulk and upper storage needs.

I have built sliding vertical shelves before, at the end of a workbench, and it worked alright. These vertical shelves are done differently.

Rousseau’s R2V vertical drawers are essentially very tall and narrow drawers with internal pegboard panel-like structures.

I would have thought the drawers to be only supported on the bottom, similar to pull-out garbage pail kitchen drawers, but they have some alignment support on the top as well.

The drawers’ paneling allows for partitions that separate the drawers into left and right compartments, but there are also open shelf options.

I need to think more about this, but I’m about sold on the idea.

In a DIY solution, a wood-framed drawer can have drawer slides on the bottom, and maybe a similar alignment rail at the top.

Looking at some of Rousseau’s other marketing materials, they show small boxes, tools, and misc. supplies stored in vertical shelves.

This seems versatile and adaptable.

I am not even close to being in a place where I can replace my wall cabinets, wire shelving units, or misc. carts and chests with permanent storage, but this is definitely going into my “inspirational ideas bank.”

As I work to streamline my storage, I keep reminding myself that the less amount of under-utilized space, the better. I also want to be able to grab something with minimal shuffling.

A 22″ to 25″ cabinet depth works great for drawers. But for shelves, unless we’re talking about storing things in industrial tote boxes – which absolutely impacts access and space utilization, 12″ to 15″ is the sweet spot. Vertical shelves look to be a way to maintain a deep cabinet depth with improve accessibility.

Rousseau doesn’t show the best examples. When visualizing a DIY version, I’m thinking storage for spray bottles, glue bottles, boxes of consumables, and other such things I can’t easily put in a drawer – things I typically pile into shelves, large pull-out bins, and bulk cabinet space.

Vertical drawers seems like a space-efficient idea for certain storage needs. What do you think? Are there other designs that can offer further inspiration?