First let me say, I don’t know what is going on with this post but I couldn’t get the images to spread out like I wanted them.  Oh well!

Because most pens need to be stored horizontal I came up with this idea.  One of the things that makes this nice is that you can make it as large as you need it and you can add to it as your collection of pens grow.  You know that it will grow especially if you get into Copics.

You can find these cylinders at the Container Store and they run $1.59 each.  You can have a storage of 10 for around $16.  Because they are plastic they will have a tendency to slide so I purchased Self-Stick Rubber Pads, you get 18 pads for about $3.00 at the Container Store.  You might be able to find them cheaper at Wal-Mart.

I remove the lid and put it in my stash to use another way or time.  I then added 4 pads to one side of the cylinder.

As you stack the cylinders up this will keep them from sliding around.

Since my stack of these cylinders is getting pretty large (I have 20 of these) I’ve started using little binder clips to clamp them together ever so often.  This helps gives a large collection of cylinders added stability as the collection grows.  This also creates a nice storage for my small binder clips ( I use these as clamps sometimes for things I need to hold in place until the glue dries).

Because the cylinders are clear it makes the area feel open.  I’ve been very happy with this storage system and have invested somewhere around $45.00 over a period of a couple of years.  The storage I’ve seen for pens usually runs around the same price, is large and bulky and does not have 20 slots for your pens.  The other nice thing about this storage, especially with Copics, is I can put like color hues together rather than color coding (BG – Blue Green, RV- Red Violet).  I more interested in what colors can be combined together to get a nice graduation of color and storing them together makes me think about colors differently.

Hope this gives you an idea to create your own storage.  When you go into a store look outside the normal storage items and see if you can find something that fits your need to a “Tee”.