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Organization

Play Ultimate? Better get a bucket

HucketBucketUltimate Frisbee is the number 1 “bro” sport, but an Ultimate Frisbee enthusiast has brought the bros a solution to their sporting woes. While the sport isn’t associated with a lot of gear, there isn’t any Ultimate Frisbee-specific tote for the Frisbee-ers to carry their gear around in. In addition, many ultimate ganes are played in open fields with a dearth of suitable seating. This Ultimate Frisbee bro has “designed” the six-gallon Hucket Bucket, with a lid and a strap, to carry your gear and double as seating. It’s a good idea, but at $30, it seems like it might be cheaper to skip the branding just buy a bucket and use an old duffel strap, or something.

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Organization Tech Accessories

FirstStand 2 gets all your mobile madness in line

FirstStandThere are many charging stands and docks available for smartphones and tablets, but relatively few can accommodate the multiple mobile devices that stuff our modern pockets and bags, much less are ready for the emerging wave of smartphones. Straight outta Brooklyn comes the oxymoronic Firststand 2, however, employs a clever hollow tube-like design that not only plays well with a smart — or really any —watch, but also accommodates resting phones and even tablets. The space inside the tube can be used for cables, keys and other small items. A bevy of length configurations stretch from a $29 early bird to a $99 combo that includes a 10″ and 4″ stand. Alas, backers’ digital darlings will likely have to flail about in lesser homes until at least May 2014.

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Organization

stuckToU lets your keys cling to walls like Spider-Man

stucktoUOrganization products don’t come much simpler than stuckToIU. With a name that sounds like it came from an ’80s pop single, the magnetic disc is affixed to your wall ready to hang your keys or other small metal object like an Old West outlaw. The video for the modest $3,500 campaign begins with a jerky slow-mo shot of keys literally being flung at the the stuckToU, which catches them neatly despite the clattering aftershocks from impact. After a $12 early bird, the reward prices shoot up to $45 for a “once in a lifetime” custom magnetic disc. The better course is to use a bit more of that lifetime to wait until the thing ships and pay $15 for it if you miss the early bird. StuckToU is slated to adorn the walls of backers in June 2014.

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Organization Pets

P.U.P wants the group in for doggie poopin’

PUP2Project creator Momo and her company HawtPaws have created the P.U.P, a “dog leash waste management system” that holds bags for cleaning up the discarded droppings of man’s best friend. At no point in the narration-free video do we learn what P.U.P stands for, although Pick Up Poop might be a good guess. The feminine-leaning handmade pooch poo pouches come in a range of six colors and serve as an alternative to plastic models sold in pet stores. P.U.P seems like a candidate for Etsy, but 12 are being made available in each of six different styles for $12 each.

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Organization

To Do Fridge Magnets help you stick to your schedule

Day Fridge MagnetsIn many homes, the refrigerator is not just the tall appliance for keeping food cold; it’s also a canopy of sorts for displaying kids’ artwork, photos, messages and other reminders. All of this is enabled via the power of magnets, a sign of the gods’ magic of that is beyond our puny human minds. Project creator Aaron Chan hopes to tap into this force, though, for the menial purpose of keeping our lives in order with large (3″ x 6″) To Do Fridge Magnets. One nice benefit of the modular day system is that you need only display the days when you have something critical going on as the whole set will take up a fair amount of refrigerator real estate. Chan has skipped a video for his “simple project” and taken the unusual step of putting limited quantities in all pricing tiers. Of course, if you’re interested in a very limited quantity, you can pick up some magnetic paper for your inkjet printer and print them yourself.

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Organization

Circle Organizer gives your hairspray extra hold in the bathroom

Circle OrganizerParticularly if you must share a bathroom with one or more folks, you know how easy it is for sinks to accumulate a massive amount of plain old stuff. Circle Organizer sacrifices a bit of porcelain real estate for a small city of circular braces designed to hold all manner of lotion, potions and toothbrush with motion. However, if you happen to use something with an odd-shaped container, it will have to stray from its organized home which will likely get quite goopy with things like errant toothpaste, soap and shaving cream. The Circle Organizer is due in May 2014 and is expected to retail for $50. Backers, though, can get it for $49 while early birds can snag up to a $10 discount from that.

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Automotive Cell Phone Accessories Organization

MOS Spring, MOS Menos attack car cable chaos

editors-choiceThe Premise.  You have a cable connecting your music player to your car’s stereo.  The fear that it will somehow manage to electrocute you has become intolerable, yet you refuse to replace it because the amount of dough you’ve coughed up for aux cables has already reached unacceptable levels.  No more shall be spent on another just for it to become lost or ruined like those before it!  Just jiggle it a little, sound quality be damned!

The Product.  The MOS Spring is a high-quality audio cable meant to be a permanent replacement to all those cheap cables.  It has woven cotton­ shrouding, and a coiled metal wire where the cable meets the jack, just like you would find on a pro-grade audio cable.  The MOS Menos is a discreet base for keeping your Mos Spring cable safe and at hand.  It mounts to your car, and employs strong magnets to keep any wayward cables in check.

 The Pitch.  The combined practicality of the Spring and MOS Menos are demonstrated with a video depicting the standard cable drama: cable lost in car, guy damages cable while retrieving, guy plugs in his phone to hear music, music rendered inaudible by cable’s crappiness.  The day is saved by the Spring, with its woven cotton, anodized aluminum and electroplated steel construction, its black, red, or teal color options, and its lifetime warranty.  The MOS Menos lends its super strong neodymium magnet,  satin body, and options of permanent adhesive, or semi-permanent suction mountings to the fray. It is also worth mentioning that the MOS Menos is the scaled-down version of the original MOS, which Kickstarted in Winter ’12 and is now selling in Apple stores.

 The Perks.  The Spring and Mos Menos are slated for availability in late March ‘14.  Sold individually, they are moderately priced at 10 dollars, or a mere 15 bucks (just 11 for early backers!) for the combo.

 The Potential.  While there are other woven cables out there for as little as 99 cents, they can also range as high as $40.  Moreover, one is hard pressed to find cables that have the Spring’s coiled wire joint reinforcement.  So combined, the Mos Spring and Menos can relieve all your electrical apprehensions, musical frustrations, and organizational headaches, for what you might spend on any other decent-quality cable.  Take the Spring’s lifetime warranty into account, and you find a sound audio investment.

Categories
Organization

Lazy Keys lights the way, puts a spring in your keys

Lazy KeysInto the well-worn collection of key organizer Kickstarter products comes Lazy Keys. As the video, which contains a lot of poorly edited titles explains, the which offers a switchblade-like release of your lock masters as well as a small LED flashlight to find your way toward the keyhole or around any dark area. Made of ABS plastic, the Lazy Keys  Reward levels include receiving the product for $25 in March 2014 and go up from there to include “keys” that can be used as a bottle opener or a USB flash drive.

Categories
Kids/Babies Luggage and Bags Organization

Bigo Bag Five goes big, packs in diverse uses

The Premise. Have you ever wanted a bag that also doubled as a rain coat or a picnic blanket? Chances are the answer is no. Ah, but what if the name of this multifunctional container sounded like the name of a bag pipe quintet? Chances are the answer would still be no.

The Product. Hailing from Budapest, the Bigo Bag Five is basically a sheet of water-resistant material that can be molded in a variety of different ways and comes in an array of colors. It can become a backpack, a poncho, a baby sling and a picnic blanket. As a fifth feature, the bag is said to be “expandable,” although this doesn’t exactly serve as its own specific function. So, perhaps it should be the Bigo Bag Four. On the other hand, it is plenty Big-o with a capacity of 50 liters. Furthermore, any number of Bigo bags can be combined for your impromptu tarp needs.

The Pitch. You can tell that Todd (the star of the campaign video) is passionate about the Bigo Bag Five, although the pitch trails off soon after it starts. The rest of the campaign shows off the bag in tons of scenarios — Bigo cradling adorable baby, Bigo fishing on the high seas, Bigo laid out in a field of green protecting a reader’s jeans, and Bigo mated with another of its species. There’s also a contrast with the smaller capacity model designed for women (in pink, of course) as well as the smaller and single-function small (25 liter) bag accessory that comes with every Bigo Bag.

The Perks. The basic edition starts at a pledge of $117 – quite a bit more than most people are willing to pay for what is basically nothing more than a bag that can be unzipped and laid out flat. The project owners seem to recognize a bit of the price/value gap by throwing in an extra strap for added stability as well as offering a lower pledge tier for the mini bag (which is probably the same thing as the accessory bag).

The Potential.Everyone likes versatility, but this bag’s has its limits. What do you do with its contents or that adorable baby if you want to convert to a poncho? The Bigo Bag fits nicely between an average backpack and a laundry sack or camping pack, but there are countless high-quality backpacks on the market, many of which come along with more features and are less expensive.