My husband has insisted on a new system for keys: I must keep one set of car keys on my person at all times, while he keeps the other set on his person at all times. It sounds foolproof, except for the fact that I (like many women) do not always wear clothes that come equipped with pockets—and I don’t always carry a purse. Which is a long way of saying that I lose said keys all the time. I put them down on the washing machine or the kitchen counter, secret them inside a pair of sneakers or even in my parents’ fruit bowl. When I really need the keys, however, I know where to find them—on my husband’s person! Perhaps if we had a Cubby, the clever wall-mounted coat hanger/niche designed by Materious, I might always keep my keys handy.

Cubby. Designed by Materious.

(Soon to Be) Made in the USA from Recyclable Polypropylene

Winner of Interior Design Magazine’s Best of Year Award in 2006, Cubby has yet to be produced and offered for sale, despite its conceptual birth in 2005. But Chicago-based studio Materious is relying on the intelligence and generosity of others to bring Cubby to fruition: via a new campaign on Kickstarter, Materious hopes to finally get Cubby out of its confining two dimensions and into the three-dimensional realm. With their commitment to manufacture (and source all materials) in the USA, Materious hopes to make Cubby as eco-conscious as possible. Crafted of injection-molded polypropylene, Cubby will contain some pre- or post-consumer recycled content. Of course, the material itself is fully recyclable, so Cubby “can simply be placed in a recycle container for easy sorting and re-grinding.”

Ideal for “small urban entryways,” not to mention mud rooms, garages, kid rooms, schools, and laundry rooms, Cubby is a combination coat hook and cubby hole—and both uses have been cleverly conceived. The large diameter of the hook is collar friendly “and won’t leave bumps and marks on jackets and sweaters.” It is also wide enough to accommodate messenger bags and purses. And yet Cubby hangs with only one screw (an American screw, I might add, that comes with its own felt cover).

Via Moco Loco.

About the Designer: Materious is the Chicago-based design studio of mechanical engineer/industrial designer Stephanie Munson Tharp and anthropologist/industrial designer/mechanical engineer Bruce Tharp. The name signifies both “consisting of matter” and “important,” and the company adheres to both these meanings with their design philosophy: “We are interested in the physical substance as well as the substantiveness of designed objects.” Materious designs objects as varied as Piggy, a nested piggy bank for children to save personally and philanthropically, and Next, a smoker’s clock that illustrates when users are due for their next fix (each hour is represented by a cigarette that gets inserted into a round slot). The designers pay close attention to the domestic sphere and “ultimately wish to imagine new possibilities for human-object relationships.”