To try to coral the various batteries, we though of building a sort of dispenser that would organize the batteries and make it easy to find out which we were low on.
Many such organizers are available in plastic but are not very pretty. I wanted an organizer that could be hung on the wall in the mechanical room.
Looking on line for idea the project that every one seems to use is the one on the left in the image below:
Although it is easy to build, I doubt that I would have the dexterity to insert the batteries and have them laying flat in such narrow channel. Dropping batteries from the top would guarantee that they would tumble in a jumbled mess. That would irritate me each time I look at it, and make it challenging to extract them. Further, it seemed hard to enter the batteries in the channels without lifting the whole assembly of the wall.
Overall this did not seem practical.
So I modified the design to get to the design on the right. The biggest change is that the front window that was originally glued or screwed on the left design is now replaced by individual windows (1) for each channel. These slide up and down in thin grooves (2), cut on the front of each divider. These thin grooves are cut on the table saw and a thin piece of wood glued in the bottom part to prevent the window to cover the lowest batteries.
The back of the wall was of varying thickness (3) to keep the front of the batteries aligned to the window
A few more modifications were a channel for rechargeable batteries separate from the disposable batteries, and a wedge-shape piece of wood on the back of the channel (4) that pushes the lowest battery forward to make it easier to pick.
Finally to encourage recharging batteries a drawer is build in the lower part (5) that contains:
1) the battery charger,
2) the battery tester (to avoid throwing away batteries of doubtful charge)
3) the coin and short batteries
The final organizer, with from left to right the AAA, AA-rechargeable, AA, 9V, C and D batteries
I made multiple rows for the AAA and AA batteries as these often come in large pack. To load them, lift their respective window and insert them.
The little grooves for the plexiglass windows:
The wedge that pushes the lowest batteries forward.
The drawer with the charger, tester and packs of coin batteries.
