Coffee Cradle

If you have even an ounce of OCD in your blood (and don't we all?), then it will bother you--in some deep, unconscious, insidious, infectious part of your soul--to see your coffee filters wilting and flattening in the dark clutter of your cabinet. It will sadden you to see gorgeous goblets of gossamer reduced to pitiful pancakes of pulp.

Yes, you can buy 700 of them for less than the price of a McDonalds meal. Yes, they are just pieces of tissue paper you use to keep your coffee from being chunky. But it's the principle of the thing. 700 coffee filters should last you 700 days, and #700 should be just as crisp, clean and lovely as #1 was.

So make yourself (or your OCD friend) a coffee cradle. All you need is:

1. A piece of wood (plywood, a fence board, a piece sawed out of your kitchen counter, etc).
2. A band-saw (if you don't like the shape of your piece of wood)
3. A drill (preferably a drill press)
4. A dowel (a 5/16" dowel should cost you about 80 cents (the price of a 3-month supply of filters))

I cut mine (creatively) into a circle roughly the size of a coffee filter.

You could get all fancy and make measurements, but I just traced a coffee filter and put a dot at every other corrugation. Then I started holes (only about 1/8" deep) at all the dots with a 1/8" drill bit.

I propped my wooden base on a block with about a 30 degree angle. This puts the holes at about a 60 degree angle to the base, which is perfect for coffee filters.

Start with a small drill (1/8") and then finish with a drill the size of your dowel (5/16" in my case)

Figure out about how long your want your dowel pieces to be (about 4 inches). Then cut a bunch of pieces that long.

Do a little sanding to make things look nice, then stick the dowels in the holes. Use some glue, if you want your coffee cradle to have the strength of a bull rhino. Wood glue or Elmers will work fine.

You have solved one of the great disorders of the universe. Congratulations.