iPhone 5 shelf

The back story

I always keep a charger next to my bed, and I always charge my phone before falling asleep. After years of maintaining this habit, I grew increasingly frustrated with having to find my charger on the floor – most of the time it falls off my night stand and sometimes under the bed. First thing I did was go to a store and buy those plastic cable holders, they were cheap and they worked okay for about three days. After that, the double stick tape adhesive wore off and the plastic loosened and didn't hold my charger effectively anymore. But my mind was set on a solution, so I put aside some time to play around in my wood shop with an Apple USB charger (at this point it was the original charger pin for the iPhone 4). The result was a perfect fit for my charger, and because the charging side was bigger than the side that goes into the wall, the cable just slipped through perfectly. I feel in love with the simplicity of the product, and I made some for everyone I knew who owned an iPhone and received very positive feedback (people really love these things once they get one). My first iPhone 4 shelf design had a ledge for the phone to sink into, but I excluded this feature once I realized that the tight fit of the charger held the phone firmly and the ledge never actually served its purpose (for those who are skeptical about your phone falling off the shelf – it won't).

Then came the release of the iPhone 5, and with it the lighting cable (a new charger pin for all future Apple devices). Considering apple hasn't updated its charger in four years, I welcomed the change and immediately set out to completely rethink my iPhone shelf. I approached the design and construction of this shelf much like Apple approached the iPhone 5, I completely redesigned it and made it much better – with a fine level of craftsmanship you would expect from a high end watch – not an Apple accessory. The lighting cord presented a unique obstacle but after many prototypes, testing, and adjustments – I'm proud to offer it for sale on my shop.