Shameless Scandinavian Design Blogging

I have to congratulate Ikea for successfully co-opting my life. I finally got sick and tired of looking at the clutter in my garage and went to see if they had anything that could remedy the situation. After working with their Gorm system I am now willing to embrace our new, Nordic overlords with open arms.

Gorm has three primary virtues; it's:

1. cheap
2. sturdy
3. just like an Erector set

Its got a bunch of simple parts that you can put together just about however you want. The only downside is that they don't have a lot of special fixtures, but that's OK. The Erector-like nature of the system makes it easy to mod, and you don't worry about screwing up because each piece is so cheap to replace.

Two minor observations:

• The overall stability of the units is much improved if you anchor them to the wall. I recommend using "U" brackets of some sort to attach them while leaving 3 or 4 inches of space between the wall and the unit. This lets you get behind them to remove bolts in case you want to move shelves around later.
• Make sure you have a metric, ratcheting socket set. It'll make installation of the bolts holding in the shelves a lot easier.