Product Review: Jetmax 3-Drawer Scrapbook Storage Cubes

In my last POST about all the new Jetmax storage items at Michaels, I mentioned that I had a hard time putting one of their 3-drawer storage cubes together…so much so, that I was dreading putting the remaining two cubes together. EILEEN on AMR just asked for storage cube advice in a thread over there, and this was my answer so I figured I’d post it here, too. I also have some storage cube recommendations.

Of the Jetmax brand, all I have are the 3-drawer cubes and the problem I had is the “wood” is so thin, that if you don’t get the teeny screws for the drawer sides in there exactly straight the first time, you never will (believe me, I tried). So then I had to really push super hard on the screwdriver to get them to go in. Mind you, I had to use the teeny screwdriver so there’s nothing to pad your hand while you’re cranking down on it either. You could use a cordless screwdriver of course, but ours doesn’t have a tip that small. There were 4 screws per drawer so I went through this struggle 12 times. Then I went to slide the drawers into the cube (which was also a pain to assemble), and they wouldn’t slide in until the screws were COMPLETELY flush with the sides of the drawers or even recessed a bit. More cranking on the tiny screwdriver and by that time my hand was already bruised.

All that said….maybe I’m the only dummy in America who wouldn’t just go buy a tiny cordless screwdriver head for this one project, LOL! It also takes 2 sets of hands to assemble the cubes themselves, holding the sides perfectly perpendicular to each other while screwing in the tiny screws while you can’t brace it against anything to accept the pressure. Does that make sense? I’m sure some would find these things easy to assemble, but I sure didn’t….

The Store in Style brand is wonderful and uses a much easier cam lock system. You can literally put together the cube itself in 5 minutes. They’re also sturdier and larger, but more expensive. I don’t know if Joann’s or anyone carries them where you could use a coupon. I got them with coupons “back in the day” when Mike’s carried Store in Style.

You might also look into ITSO plastic storage at Target. The cubes take no assembly per se, other than sticking little pegs in each corner (if you want to stack them) to bind them to each other. They have all kinds of drawers, baskets, shelves, and such and you can really customize it. I have 3 of those ~ just the plain cubes ~ that I stack my CM Power Sort Boxes in. If I had known about Itso before I invested in the Store in Style, I probably would’ve done my whole wall in Itso. It’s cheaper and more flexible with the configurations you can do. Here are some Itso REVIEWS; two of them are from scrappers!

Anyway, there’s some more info and photos of all 3 types of cubes HEREand at the bottom of THIS post. If you’re in the market for scrappy storage, I hope that helps ya!