Welcome to Dooba Reviews

Rustic River Leather Photo Album

Author Thomas | 28.09.2009 | Category Accessories

We live in a world of speed and ever evolving technology.  Obviously (as evidenced through the posts), I like technology, but I also really enjoy the classic, traditional, and old fashioned things in life.  Wouldn’t it be great to have a tract of land to farm with a large house…and high speed Internet, Google Android Phones, etc.?

Anyway, in this techno world that we live in, it’s become more and more easy to take pictures and store them.  I’ve found myself taking more and more pictures and simply storing them on my computer.  There’s really no constraint other than hard drive size, so away I snap.

More recently, I’ve begun storing pictures in photo albums.  There’s just something special (how quaint), about viewing pictures in an album.  Recently we took a horseback riding trip, and I wanted a great place to store the pictures.  The Rustic River Leather Photo Album hits the spot perfectly.

I got the Dark Brown Version (pictured is the Saddle Brown), and oddly enough, I found a spot for it on the mantel, and it looks great.  The leather is very rustic.  It’ll show marks and dings, but that’s part of the style.  However, I’m still pretty careful with it.  The album holds 100 4×6 pictures and is hand sewn.

The inside of the album is similar to a regular photo album.  It’s the outer construction that makes all the difference.  It takes a few tries to get the leather wrap knot correct.

So in our high-paced, ever changing world, it feels great to do something a little old fashioned.

ShelfReliance CanSolidator Pantry Review

Author Thomas | 02.03.2009 | Category Home & Garden

CanSolidator Pantry Dimensions: Height: 11″ Width: 20″ Depth: 16.5″ Capacity: 40 Cans

The ShelfReliance CanSolidator Pantry is a great way to store food cans.  But who would want to store food cans?  Katrina, Hugo, Tornadoes, Earthquakes, Downsizing…ring any bells?  Storing food is a smart idea in preparation for difficult times.  It’s also just a good idea to have some food on hand for those crazy cooking moods you might get in.  You many just need something that comes in a can.

The CanSolidator can help you stay stocked with food because it makes it easy to see where you’re running low.  We recently purchased a CanSolidator and were amazed when we went to fill it just how low we were on a certain food type.  It was hard to see previously because our cans were stacked one on top of the other.  We purchased the CanSolidator Pantry, but will probably upgrade to the Pantry Plus soon because our shelves are wide and can fit more.

The product is a Food Rotation System or FRS for short.  Using First in First out or FIFO, cans are placed in the CanSolidator at the top level and then rotate down to the bottom level.  You remove cans from the bottom, thus using the oldest cans first.

A few thoughts and observations when we pulled it out of the box:

• Assembly is required.  It’s not a big deal, but you have to put the pieces together to fit the width of cans you want to put in there.
• Holds three full-sized cans and one medium can.  We weren’t able to fit 4 large soup cans in there, but we could fit 3 large cans and one medium cream of mushroom soup can.
• Deep than expected.  The CanSolidator was deeper than we expected, but the “Pantry” fit in our Pantry just fine.  We also measured for the CanSolidator Cupboard and it would fit in our cupboards.  It looks like they were built to standard sizes.
• Holds only 4 types of cans.  The Pantry model holds 40 cans but only 4 different types of cans (10 of each).  So, after we set it up, we thought, “Hmmm.  We need another one.”
• Better in earthquakes and other natural disasters.  We noticed as we were moving our cans around prior to putting them in the CanSolidator, that our cans on the shelf can be knocked off very easily.  Once we put them in the CanSolidator, it was hard to get them to just fall out.  This is an advantage because if you think of any natural disasters that might shake your house a little bit, your stacked cans would fall over, break, or otherwise be compromised.  The big problem is that it’s in the natural disasters when you might need your cans the most!  Shaking the CanSolidator, we saw that the cans weren’t going to go anywhere.  The very top cans if filled up to the edge might fall, but not very much more than that.
• Space utilization.  It seems that we could fit more cans on our shelf if they were simply stacked instead of in the CanSolidator, but we like the CanSolidator because it helps us to better manage food cans, it looks so much better on the shelf than a bunch of stacked cans, and it’s cool.
• Stackable.  The CanSolidator is stackable.  In fact, the Pantry can be split into two separate units.
• Expandable.  The rotation system can be exapanded with more peices or hooked together with additional Cansolidators.
• Helps to monitor food storage levels.  We really like that we can see at a quick glance if we’re running low on food storage items.
• Helps rotate through food stock.  The CanSolidator helps us use the oldest cans first.  If you think about it, stacking cans usually hides the oldest cans in the back and bottom of the pile.

Video Demo from LLG & Company of the CanSolidator Pantry

Overall, we really like the CanSolidator Pantry, and will be getting more soon.

Bellagio-Italia CD / DVD Storage Album

Author Thomas | 24.02.2009 | Category Accessories, Electronics

The Bellagio-Italia CD / DVD Storage Binder by HandStands is a great tool for freeing up space in your entertainment center.  We have about 6-7 of these, and they’re fantastic.  Our shelves look so much better having swapped out all of our DVD cases and placing the DVDs into the binder.

Since we really don’t use the DVD menu cards, we put in only the DVDs even though the binders can accommodate the menu cards.  We felt it was a waste of space to have those in there.

Video Demo from LLG

The binder is “3-ring” and holds 48 discs.  Extra pages can be ordered if you want to store more discs in a single album.  We’ve categorized our DVD binders into Kid Movies, Animated Movies, Adventure Movies, etc.  There’s a little bracket on the spine that lets you write what the binder holds.

The albums help protect the DVDs even better than the DVD cases (in our case) because our DVD cases tended to get tossed on the floor and stepped on by the kids.  The binders are sturdy, and stand up just fine on their own.

The Bellagio-Italia CD / DVD Binders are avaible at LLGco.com