Making a Modular Desk Organizer

I’d been fighting a losing battle with my desk ever since I built it. Every morning I’d clear it off, trying to keep things minimal and clean, but by lunch it looked like a tornado hit. The same stuff kept piling up in the same spot – pens, measuring tape, SD cards, random notes. It wasn’t just clutter from old projects either. These were things I actually used every single day, so putting them in a drawer didn’t make sense. They’d just end up back on the desk within an hour anyway.

The obvious solution was some kind of organizer, but I didn’t want just another plastic tray where everything gets dumped together. That’s not organizing – that’s just containing the chaos. I wanted something that actually had a specific spot for each item, looked good on the desk, and could work for other people too. So I grabbed a notebook and started listing everything that kept showing up on my desk. Pens and pencils were obvious. My measuring tape was always there. SD cards seemed to multiply on their own. And my phone charger, which I’d been hanging off the back of my monitor, needed a better home since the monitor arm made everything bounce around when I bumped the desk.

I gave myself one main constraint for this project – the organizer had to be exactly as wide as my keyboard. That way it would look intentional, like it belonged there, not just another random thing on the desk. That meant the thing was going to be pretty wide, about 12.8 inches. Most 3D printers can’t handle something that big in one piece, but Bambu Lab had just sent me their new H2S printer to test out. This thing has a massive build area compared to my other printer, about 120% bigger than their X1C model. Perfect timing.

The design came together pretty quickly once I started modeling it in Autodesk Fusion. Instead of making one giant organizer, I decided to create a frame with separate inserts that drop into it. This way, people could arrange things however they wanted or even swap out inserts for different tasks. Being left-handed, I needed my writing surface on the left side where my hand naturally goes. But right-handed people would want it on the opposite side. The modular design solved that problem. Each insert could go anywhere in the frame.

The 3D printing part went smooth as expected. The H2S handled the large frame piece without any issues, and the quality was fantastic right out of the gate. I printed most of the inserts in black PETG – a material I trust that looks clean on the desk. The printer’s hot end goes up to 350°C, so it can handle pretty much any material you throw at it. The AMS2 Pro attachment made it easy to do multi-color prints too. Just click on the face you want to change color in Bambu Studio, pick your color, and that’s it. Way easier than I expected.

But here’s where things got interesting. The H2S isn’t just a 3D printer – it has a laser attachment that slides right onto the tool head. You plug in one cable, attach an air hose, and suddenly you’ve got a 10-watt laser cutter. I used this to cut custom walnut dividers for the SD card holder. The wood adds a nice touch that breaks up all the black plastic, and it was way faster than trying to cut those thin pieces by hand. I also cut a piece of acrylic to use as a small dry-erase board that fits perfectly in one of the slots.

The coolest part about this whole system is how flexible it turned out to be. Since everything is held in place with magnets, you can rearrange the layout whenever you want. Need more writing space today? Swap in another notepad holder. Working on a project with lots of small parts? Replace the pen holder with a parts tray. You could even keep a drawer full of different inserts and change them out based on what you’re working on that day. The phone charger section can move to either end depending on whether you’re left or right-handed, so your wrist doesn’t hit it while writing.

After using this thing for a while now, my desk actually stays organized. Everything has a specific home, and since those homes make sense, stuff actually goes back where it belongs. The SD cards stay in their walnut slots. The pens stand upright where I can grab them. My measuring tape has its own spot. Even my sticky notes have a dedicated holder. It’s not magic – it just works because it was designed around how I actually use these things every day. Plus it looks way better than a pile of random stuff next to my keyboard. Thanks for following along with the build. Now, go make something awesome!