3D Printed Shower Wall Organizers
It's all about water flow
TLDR: Show Me The Goods
The models are available on Printables and more detailed info on the dimensions and printing techniques are available there:
https://www.printables.com/model/257446-shower-wall-organizers
Intro
Living in Houston quickly teaches you about water flow and drainage. You may have heard about some of the flooding events that hit Houston, among other places. In a city when water accumulates in one place and fails to drain that’s a problem.
Similarly in a shower you want water to reach the drain; if it forms puddles it makes it harder to remove moisture which leads to more effort fighting off mold. For me, if I can keep shower accessories like cleaners, squeegees, gels, etc off the surfaces where water lands then there are fewer places for water to accumulate, less issues with metal bottles rusting, and it just keeps things feeling cleaner. The solution? Mount all of these accessories on the wall!
Designs
This is a functional print which means we want a part that serves exactly the function we want. This starts with measurements and deciding on basic geometry and design concept. I divided up the objects into different categories based on how the holder can work.
Common Ideas
For all of these designs one thing that hasn’t been addressed is how they will stick to the wall. I dislike permanent changes like drilling in general, and that goes quadrouple for things that aren’t drywall. So I live by adhesives; my go-to adhesive is the Command Large Picture Hanging Strips. I use the measurements of these to guide how tall and wide the holders’ backplate have to be at a minimum (so as to hide the command strip).
Drainage is mandatory for all of these. The bottom of the holders need to be simultaneously strong enough to hold the objects and also have open spots to permit drainage; this is after all one of the primary benefits of mounting these on the wall with purpose-built parts.
Things With Handles
This squeegee and cleaning brush both have long, narrow handles. Also, the top of each is larger than the handle, and the squeege in particular has a very wide top. My approach is to create a dual-cylindrical holder that is at least tall enough to keep these items stable, but not so tight that there’s no wiggle room. The squeegee head would touch the brush head but with wiggle room the head could fit behind or in front of the brush.
For measurements, while the brush handle is cylindrical the squeegee handle is an irregular shape that can be thought of as box-like. The width is the largest dimension so we’ll take that as the baseline diameter of the holder. The handles are all longer than the height of a command strip so I’ll choose the height of the part to be the height of the part.
Rectangular Bottles
The Windex bottle and body wash bottle have more-or-less rectangular bases. My approach is to create a simple rectangular basket wide enough to hold both of these items. Since the Windex is larger than the body wash I’ll use its length and width to guide the baseline dimensions of the basket. As before these are all much taller than the command strip height so that will be the height of the basket.
Cylindrical Things
The spray bottles have completely cylindrical bases so it makes sense to choose a cylindrical holder. The plastic bottle has the greatest diameter so that should be the reference baseline diameter. The shaving accessories are more interesting. The shaving gel is also cylindrical but quite narrow; if we make the holders based on the plastic bottle’s large diameter then there would be a lot of extra room – enough room for the razor base and and the blade holder. As a first pass I’ll use the same holder for these as well, though I acknowledge a more specialized part could be created at the cost of flexibility.
In this case I don’t want or need the full height of the command strip for the height of the cylindrical holder, because a shorter holder will provide enough stability and allow the shaving accessories to be visible and accessible.
Loofah
The loofah: a category of its own. Unlike the other parts my strategy here isn’t to design something to contain it but instead to hang it, because the loofah already has a loop for hanging it. Plus that approach will let the loofah dry as fast as possible which furthers our goal. So I’ll measure the diameter of the loofah and then make sure the hanger juts out at least that much so that it also stays away from the wall.
3D Printing
These parts generally don’t have intricate detailed features in the vertical dimension so I went with a 0.20 layer height, but I used quality-oriented presets (in terms of Prusa Slicer’s basic presets) rather than speed because the first layers do have precision-sensitive detailed features. I used 4 perimeters which, when coupled with some heat gun treatment after the print, works to improve water resistance even though I’m using PLA. If you’re interested in learning more about these techniques, see the Prusa article on watertight 3D printing. More details are available at the printables page if you’re interested in printing these.
Future Improvements
I think that creating a purpose-built holder for the shaving accessories would be a nice addition, especially because it can be annoying having the razor base and blade holder loose and liable to fall on their sides. Also the loofah hook can be shortened a bit and still keep the loofahs away from the wall; this was a measurement error since I treated it as being spherical but that is only useful for the vertical dimension.