Another problem – Solved!
We use a lot of plastic bags for packing lunches and freezing food. Since we are hip and green, we try to re-use our bags at least once (unless they contained raw meat!). After washing the bags, we used to stick them on wooden spoons and then stick the spoons in-between the coils of our electric stove so they would stand up and keep the bags open.
Since I'm already the world's slowest dish washer, I thought there ought to be a more efficient way to dry these bags - something more permanent that was easy to use but didn't take up much space in our pocket-sized kitchen.
Behold the wall mounted pointy crazy looking tree thing plastic bag dryer!
The design took two iterations with the first attempt having the two individual sticks further apart and coming away from the wall equal distances. To make the unit more compact, my wife had the idea to stagger the dowels on each stick, and then have each stick come out a different distance away from the wall. This would allow for the unit to fold up tightly, yet still be able to dry two bags at once.
The original plastic bag dryer was made out of poplar with two drying sticks. This was my biggest mistake - not enough capacity! We often have 3 or 4 bags to wash at a time, so doubling the capacity is what I did on my second build. For this one, I chose to use oak for the wood. This one (pictured above) came out looking quite professional, and I was happy with the improved design. I gave this one away to my oldest brother as a gift as I imagine he's got a lot of bags on spoons at his house too.
UPDATE March 5th 2017: Fast forward a year and a half and I've made some improvements. The video below shows how I built the updated version.
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