In case you have children you know that they stick their fingers anywhere they can. When they get their hands on your parts everything ends up on the floor in a pile of mess. There is a way to solve this problem though. By using a simple trick we can protect our meticulously sorted stuff from destruction.

The basic idea is to rotate the drawers so that the back side which has no handles is presented on the front. We will use a magnet to open the drawers.

See how to do this in detailed steps.

Step 1: Required Parts and Tools

The parts and tools required are marked on the photo but to recap:

The drawers themselves
Screws
Ruler and pencil
Drill
Wire cutters
A magnet (not shown)

Obviously you don't need hardcore wire cutters like I found in the hackerspace :). They should be able to cut the screws that you bought.

The screws I had at my disposal were 3.5 x 16 mm which were a bit too long but I would not recomment going smaller. The reason is that the larger the screw the better it will stick to the magnet. A screw which will be too small will not allow you to easily pull the drawer out.

Step 2: Mark the Center of a Drawer

Using your ruler and pencil mark a center on the back side of each drawer.

Step 3: Drill Hole

Take one of the screws and screw it into the wood, then reverse direction and remove it leaving the hole. This way you won't need a drill bit and the hole will fit perfectly.

Step 4: Adjust Screw Length

As you can see the screw was longer then the width of the drawer walls which would cause the sharp part to stick out inside. Ouch!

Take your wire cutters and cut the screw to make it shorter. Because we used an uncut screw before to make the hole in the drawer wall we don't have to bother to leave the tip. You may have to adjust them screw length more than once if you want a perfect length :). One trick to get the length exactly right in all drawers is to take the first adjusted screw and use it as a template to cut all of them in advance.

Step 5: Put in the Adjusted Screws

Put the screw in the hole you just made so that it doesn't stick out on the inside or on the outside. The second photo shows the result you are looking for.

Step 6: Repeat and Enjoy

Now repeat all the steps for the rest of the drawers.

Enjoy your new child-safe storage solution :). A hard disk magnet allows you to open the drawers.

As a bonus your can present this to your child as their first hacking challenge!