Welcome to your under sink cabinet is it a mess? Mine was and I decided to tame the chaos with a dowel rod hanger.
The dowel rod hanger is perfectly easy to make and is suspended in any cabinet you choose, making it the ideal under sink organizer.
Make a Dowel Rod Hanger to Tame Chaos
Impactful change is when you have the ability to make a difference quickly and easily.
Gain organization and change the mess with an under sink organizer in any room, using my easy to make under dowel rod hanger I’ll show you how!
If you can’t find what you are looking for it means you have a disorganized mess under the sink cabinet and you’ve got to change that.
Why spend time moving through the clustered mess of stuff you are not using or need and can’t find?
Tame the chaos!
Why Do You Need A Dowel Rod Hanger Solution?
When you go to find something does it take you more than 5 minutes and do you have to pull everything out from under the sink cabinet to find what you are looking for?
TIME SUCK is what this is known as, and what you will be known for.
Is that the legacy you want to leave, lol?
I’ll be honest, I never really took pride in keeping an under sink organizer in any of the rooms that did have under sink cabinets with the option for organization, until the chaos took over and I had 3 kids and no time!
Often, I just tossed more sh## there and kept on moving.
But, it got to a point that I had to hang up what was on the ground so that I stopped buying the same thing at the store when I didn’t need it and had it opened already.
I needed a simple solution and I am telling you now if you follow the directions of someone that tells you to install a simple tension rod, you deserve what happens!
On Or Off The Clock. Transparency Matters. Welcome to Reality!
Clearly, that person has rocks for brains because the tension rod width and strength you would need under the sink cabinet do not come in sizes small enough for cabinets.
So let me be crystal clear if you are just going to try to slap up a tension rod, and then load that girl with bottles, good luck, as I can tell you this, “epic fail ahead!”
#1 Key To Organization Under the Sink Cabinet is…..
Purging, sorting then building to organize.
Did you get that question right?
I’ll tell you why you didn’t.
Because for some reason you followed an influencer that showed you to just hang up a tension rod, thin and flimsy as it may be and you are done! Ah, do you feel good?
Hardly does that work, and I can tell you that if you don’t use the key to organizing meaning, purging, sorting then organizing you will never be able to have a clean area under the sink cabinet.
Start cleaning out underneath the cabinets and organizing to reap the rewards of knowing what you have!
Need inspiration and some ideas to organize under their kitchen sink, read my latest article on 7 Smart Ways To Organize Under the Kitchen Sink.
As An Added Bonus to Achieving Under The Sink Cabinet Organization…
Purging leads to finding and finding leads to combining 2 or 3 open bottles of the same thing into 1.
Suddenly you have backstop or unopened bottles that you ‘discovered’ and now you don’t have to go spend more money on what you think you are missing because
Knowing what you have and using it!
Plus, you won’t overbuy or buy what you already had and could not find!
Wow, imagine that reading a short article on my website just shed light on your mega overspending and you solved a problem in your life!
Tension Rods Create More Tension
After purchasing at least 3 tensions that were broken before ever used, I stopped. There has to be an easier way.
You see one day on YouTube I saw this well, ‘girl’ who had the answer to everything, yet no matter what she was sharing, and I was trying, it was NOT working.
Inexperience is a bitch and when you add lying (swapped out products) it really makes the end viewer question what the hell these wanna-be influencers and YouTubers are doing!
Truth or Dare is what I call it because you got a 50/50 shot of finding a recipe that works and a DIY that doesn’t bottom out!
So, when I watched her videos again, I really paid attention to them before, and after and snapped a few screenshots.
DAMN! Her tension rod was hosting empty spray bottles, not filled, and that is why she had no real cleaning solution products in real bottles hanging.
She had purchased some of these bottles and hung them with nothing in them.
I mean if I lived in a world where you could clean with a spray bottle that had nothing in it and make fingerprints disappear or bacteria leave my countertops, hell I’d be right down with this.
But the fact is, SHE lied and if you put weighted objects on those little flimsy tension rods, they are gonna go boom and Walmart does not like to take broken tension rods back when you tell them what happened!
Get real, do the thing, called a DIY, for a sturdy hanging rack, and keep those bottles off the ground, suspended until needed, and free up some ground-level space for all the crap you want to chuck inside that organized under the sink cabinet space!
Now I want to share a quick DIY tutorial with you on how to make an under sink dowel rod hanger.
You can use these under any sink in your home, providing you have 2 walls of some sort under there! Let’s go make this!
The Home Improvement Employee That Tried To STOP Progress
Wow, are you reading because you are interested or because you simply can’t believe that I will tell the truth!
Right now I am beyond exhausted of all the false claims by people not even using the right terms when sharing projects, or recipes, and by retailers that have awful employees.
I tend to refer to this as my prize dowel rod hanger. Why?
Read or skip, it has nothing to do with the story but everything to do with the retail experience 2x. We’ve all been there, I am just sick of sucking it up. You see even if this retailer reads this story and I never work with them as an influencer or DIY blogger, I am FINE with that, because after the issue I had with the men that work at the Customer Service counter, and then trying to reach out to them via Twitter to get to Corporate with zero response, I have zero love for the store and zero need to show any affection for a place that men can treat women horridly. More to the point that a female employee working alongside them walked out of the store during my interaction with the men because they are ROTTEN to her as well! The lack of response to my complaint, more than tells me everything I never wanted to know about their stance towards women. Even in the scene that played out years before this recent issue. But ain’t it a kick in the pants and kind of funny that 2 of the company’s executive roles are held by women, yet we are held up at customer service by MEN that won’t help and won’t even INTERACT with you. K —- Nuf! Ladies, where are you??
Back to the Under Sink Cabinet situation.
As a little bonus to my story, I had a lovely male employee with a mouth that didn’t know when to zip, who worked at this home improvement center, tell me my project wouldn’t work when he asked if he could help me find something ( I was looking for the V brackets)
Eh-em… 5 years later, it’s still holding as good as day 1, no thanks to him!
The male employee ‘didn’t like my idea’ of Brackets and Command strips, and I’ve come to the conclusion that I made a very good decision.
He said, “hate to guide you and tell you what to do, but I disagree with how you are doing this, and believe I will just hope you will change your mind and use a drill and screws!”
My response: Gee thanks, Boss!
I took his information, tucked it right under my GTH file, and continued on my way.
What he hadn’t taken into consideration because he was so busy telling me HOW to do the project was the fact that my under-the-sink cabinet is right where the dishwasher is, there will be NO drilling going on unless you want to drill into the dishwasher panel!
Additionally, he had severe doubts that 3m hanging strips would be the necessary adhesive (hey 3M guess you are not on his top hits list either!).
Newsflash: fast forward a few years later, we are going strong and still hanging!
I never doubted myself and it is my most simple creation that solves disorganization!
Benefits of an Under Sink Dowle Rod Hanger
- unlike a tension rod, I am mounting it to sit and stay, not sit and slide.
- it’s fast and easy and won’t untwist and break
- the rod is wood, not flimsy aluminum
- no twisting to open and adjust it
- you can cut a dowel to any size and there are thicker dowels and thinner ones depending on what you need to hang and the length needed.
What A Difference This DIY Dowel Rod Hanger Makes
What Is The Functional Purpose of A DIY Under Sink Dowel Rod Hanger?
- Organize your spray bottles, by hanging them.
- Hang your bottle brushes
- Rubber gloves will have a hanging spot and dry
- Be able to see what you have and use it, and not buy more than you need.
- Scrub brushes can hang (spare ones too) rather than sitting in the sink
At its most basic function, it’s organization.
However, it is also functional and useful when it comes to air drying a pair of gloves, etc.
Materials You Need to Make This Hanger
- 3m velcro picture hanging strips – 12-pound holders (2 strips = 8 pounds)
- ‘V’ Brackets/Corner Braces (not using the screws unless you want it mounted forever)
- Dowel Rod 3/4″ Wide
- Tape Measure
- Pencil
- 10 Minutes
How to assemble the sturdy hanging rack
Measure your length in order to purchase the right dowel.
Start by marking off the height of mounting for your brackets, making sure that your mounting will still allow for the spray bottle nozzles to attach to the rod, and not scrape the sink bowl if you have an undermount sink or whatever kind of sink you have.
Next, you’ve gotta mark BOTH sides of the walls, so this is perfectly even and you are not going downhill or uphill on either side. Measuring is the key to accuracy.
Now that you have measured and are sure of where the brackets are going, you will affix each command strip portion to the wall sins the bracket.
And you can attach the other piece of the Command strip to the bracket but just do it and set it aside.
Command strips have to sit in place for at least an hour before mounting anything on them, to ensure they are properly affixed to the wall.
You’ll need to cut the dowel rod to size, but, the brackets have taken away a bit of the length you once pre-measured for, so you will need to wait to affix the brackets and then measure as close as possible to get the measurement.
Then, cut the dowel rod, as stingily as possible to keep it accurate and secure in the ‘V’ bracket.
After the rod is cut, snug it into the brackets.
The Easy Sturdy Hanging Rack Finale!
Installing a DIY under sink dowel rod hanger was fast, simple, and practical.
While I know you have already seen the after, I will happily show it again because I think it makes the best statement of what a difference this can make.
Now that the rod is installed it is much more organized and my spray bottles are hanging as are my rubber gloves.
I can see the things I need without sifting through a pile of crap!
The new dowel rod allows the under-the-sink area to be defined as ground or hanging!
IN fact, I hardly have to bend to get the spray bottles which is kind of nice! As a bonus, there’s nothing permanent about the hanger.
What was the cost of this Under sink cabinet sturdy hanging rack?
My whole spend on the project was under $3.75 including the hardware, so that is pretty much nothing.
However, the return is organization. It does not get better than that!
Let me know how yours turns out! ~ DANA XO
