You've got mail! Your roommates do too. What you don't have is a sorter, and you're fairly certain you didn't see one on your last high speed IKEA crusade. "Golly, that's the one thing we don't have!" the chummy IKEA sales person is shocked! You could order one online, and it would probably be just fine, but that's not your style. You want it RIGHT NOW darn it! You can't live another second with your mail being mixed together with your roommates's mail. You'll just have to make your own.

Luckily, you foresaw this predicament last week and used your companies' high-tech fabrication tool to cut out some very low tech shapes of plywood. Forget delicately crafted Japanese wood joinery, you're on the clock, so you squeeze out too much glue and slap those rectangles on the bottom. Use EVERY clamp you own to hold 7 inches of wood together as it dries. It's definitely not overkill.

Meanwhile, better get to cutting dowels. Grab that 1/4" stick meant for something else and cut ten 2" lengths, enough for the number of holes. Make sure to sand the edges so your fingers don't get a splinter from the rough craft wood when sorting your roommates mail. Glue those into the base, which is now dry.

The final step is all cosmetics. Spend a few days doing multiple coats of polyurethane, then realize that you didn't sand the pieces enough for the sealer to hide the rough edges. Oh well you were done anyway. *Sigh of relief* Congrats! Your mail can finally sit up right in a sorted order! Wasn't that better than buying one online?