Patent Application
20140183079
This invention relates to spice racks and in particular to a spice rack providing improved kitchen space utilization.
Convenient access to cooking spices can greatly simplify the preparation of many recipes. Countertop spice racks can display multiple spice containers within easy reach, but suffer from the drawback of using scarce counter space and exposing the spices to light and heat which may decrease their life. For this reason, many cooks store spices within the kitchen cabinets above the counters. Such cabinets provide ample storage space but can make it difficult to view and access spice containers to the extent that the frontmost spice containers block those at the rear. Alternatively, positioning the spices all to the front of the shelves, in front of other kitchen sundries, risks dislodging the spice containers when the larger objects are removed.
For these reasons, it is known to mount spice racks on the interior face of the cabinet doors themselves. When the doors are opened, the spices are readily visible in the single plane of the door. Spice racks of this kind are taught, for example, in U.S. Pat. No. 2,122,336 to Barry issued Jun. 28, 1938.
The space available on the inside of a cabinet door is limited by the need to prevent interference between the spice rack on the door and the shelves and items on the shelves. For this reason the spice racks must be generally positioned in areas away from the shelves and the items on the shelves must be positioned away from the shelf edges to provide room for the spice rack when the door closes.
Retaining the spice containers in the door-mounted spice racks when the cabinet door is opened is normally provided by “guardrails” on the shelves attached to the cabinet door. These guardrails can obscure the spice containers and their labels and require a lifting of the spices out of the shelves necessitating ample spacing between the spice racks for this movement.
Such shelf systems practically have limited storage capability and require the use of multiple cabinet doors if large numbers of spices are to be stored, an approach which reduces the ability to access the spices easily.
The present invention provides a spice rack that utilizes the unused volume between the shelves and the cabinet door defined by the thickness of the face frame against which the cabinet door fits. By employing extremely low-profile spice containers and a thin spice container supporting structure, a hitherto unused portion of the cabinet and kitchen are rendered usable for the spice storage.
One embodiment of the present invention provides a spice holding system including a cabinet having a cabinet volume accessible through a face frame defining a cabinet opening, the cabinet providing a door hingeably covering the cabinet opening by moving between an opened position allowing access through the cabinet opening and a closed position overlaying the face frame with an inner surface of the door proximate to an outer face of the face frame, the face frame having a first thickness measured perpendicularly to a plane of the outer face of the face frame between the outer face of the face frame and an inner face of the face frame, the cabinet further providing at least one shelf supported horizontally within the cabinet volume and having a front edge displaced rearward from the inner face of the face frame by a clearance distance allowing insertion and removal of the shelf into and from the cabinet volume by a tipping of the shelf away from a horizontal plane. A spice container support is attached at a rear surface to the inner surface of the door to be positioned within the face frame when the door is closed, the spice container support having a second thickness measured perpendicularly to a plane of the inner surface of the door and between the rear surface of the spice container support and an exposed first attachment surface of the spice container support. A plurality of spice containers each having a second attachment surface are releasably attached to the first attachment surface of the spice container support, the spice containers providing a third thickness measured between the second attachment surface and an opposed front surface of the spice containers wherein the sum of the second and third thickness is substantially less than a sum of the first thickness and the clearance distance.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to take advantage of conveniently located and generally unused space within a cabinet. Unlike conventional shelves, existing shelf storage space is not encroached upon.
The sum of the first and second thickness may be substantially less than 1 inch or substantially less than 15/16 of an inch. In addition to or alternatively the third thickness may be substantially no greater than ⅞ of an inch.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide a spice rack which works with standard cabinets.
The spice containers may be rectangular prisms having transparent front surfaces
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide a space efficient form factor dense packing that nevertheless allows ready visual inspection of the package contents.
The spice holding system may include spice containers which provide an opening in a wall extending between the second attachment surface and the front surface that may be positioned upward when the spice container is positioned on the first attachment surface.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to position the lid of the spice containers upward during storage to prevent spillage.
The opening is a living hinge.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide a quickly openable lid that is readily manufactured without a need to be constructed of the transparent material.
The spice containers are a moldable transparent thermoplastic.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide ready visual inspection of the interiors of the spice containers when stored on the door.
The spice containers may further include a spice label positioned on the front surface and having an aperture revealing a content of the spice container through the transparent front wall.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide additional information about the spices using a label while allowing inspection of the spices within the container
The aperture may be positioned approximately midway along the height of the front surface.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide a visual display of the spices augmenting spice selection during most of the use of the spice container.
The aperture may be fully blocked by spices when the container is two thirds full or more.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to eliminate consumer confusion caused by settling of spices during shipment.
The aperture may be fully unblocked by spices when the container is ⅙ full or less.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide an indication of when new spices should be ordered.
The first and second attachment surfaces may be magnetically attracted materials.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide a low profile attachment method that allows complete flexibility in arranging of the spices within the storage volume.
The first attachment material may span an intersection of the plane of the shelves and the inner surface of the door so that the spice containers may be attached at this intersection.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to fully utilize unused space in the cabinet including adjacent to shelves.
The spice containers may be mountable to provide opposed services perpendicular to the attachment surface that may be grasped by a user's opposed thumb and fingers.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to provide ready access to individual spice containers.
The first and second attachment surfaces may be releasable by movement solely in a direction perpendicular to a plane of the inner surface of the door.
It is thus a feature of at least one embodiment of the invention to allow removal of the spice containers without awkward upward movement and without the need to preserve clearance rooms for upward movement.
These particular features and advantages may apply to only some embodiments falling within the claims and thus do not define the scope of the invention.
Referring now to
Referring also to
The cabinet volume 16 is accessible through a cabinet opening 20 bounded by inner edges of a face frame 22 typically comprising vertically extending styles 24 extending between upper and lower horizontally extending rails 25. Generally the shelves 18 extend in the cabinet volume 16 to the left and right of the inner edges of the face frame 22 reflecting the fact that the cabinet volume 16 is greater in cross-sectional area than the cabinet opening 20. A front edge of the shelves 18 abuts a rear surface of the face frame 22 and extends behind the face frame 22 in order to provide the maximum storage surface and to eliminate the risk of materials falling down from the sides of the shelves 18 within the cabinet volume 16.
Cabinet doors 26 may be attached to the cabinets 14, for example, by hinges 28 extending between an edge of the cabinet door 26 and one side of the cabinet opening 20 (typically the face frame 22), allowing the cabinet doors 26 to pivot about a vertical axis 29 to swing between an opened position providing access to the cabinet volume 16 (as shown in the upper cabinets of
Referring still to
The ferromagnetic sheet 34 provides a spice container support to which multiple spice containers 38 may be attached by means of attachment surfaces (for example, magnets) on the rear of the spice containers 38 as will be described below. In a preferred embodiment, the spice containers 38 are generally rectangular parallelepipeds that may be arranged in multiple horizontal rows 40 and vertical columns 42 within a plane parallel to the inner face 30 with either the rows 40 or the columns 42 spaced by finger gaps 44 as will be described below.
In one nonlimiting example, the spice containers 38 may have a horizontal width of 2 inches measured along the plane of the inner face 30, a vertical height of 2¾ inches also measured along the plane of the inner face 30 and a thickness measured perpendicular to a plane in the inner face 30 of ⅞″, all being measurements when the spice containers 38 are attached to the ferromagnetic sheet 34. A standard size cabinet door 26 may hold as many as ten rows and seven columns or seventy spice containers for a total storage area of as much as 336 cubic inches or approximately 6 quarts.
Referring now to
The thickness 54 of the spice container 38 of up to ⅞ inches then provides a total projection of the spice containers 38 from the inner face 30 of approximately ⅞ inches. The bulk of this projection is within a thickness 56 of the face frame 22, a space which is generally unused as will be explained below. Approximately ¼ of an inch of the spice containers 38 projects inward beyond a rear surface of the face frame 22 into a clearance zone 58 being a gap between a front edge 60 of the shelves 18 and the rear surface of the face frame 22.
Referring to
Referring again to
Accordingly by dimensioning the sum of the thicknesses 52 and 54 to be less than a sum of the thickness 54 of the face frame 22 and the clearance zone 58, a substantial volume of unused space may be reclaimed without loss of other cabinet space. Generally, the total thickness 52 plus thickness 54 will be less than 1 inch, or less than 15/16 of an inch and the thickness 54 will be substantially no greater than ⅞ of an inch.
Referring now to
Referring now to
In one embodiment, a paper or polymeric label 78 may be attached to the front wall exposed to a user when the cabinet door 26 is open and optionally side walls providing a labeling of the contained spice 80, a brand-name 82, and a window 84 through which the contained spices may be visible as will be described further below.
As shown in
Referring now to
Referring now to
In yet another embodiment, the attachment between the spice containers 38 and the cabinet door 26 may comprise hook and loop fastener-type material, for example, similar to or that sold under the Velcro tradename.
It will be appreciated that the support surface provided by the ferromagnetic sheet 34 or the support surface 100 need not extend over the entire inner surface of the cabinet door 26 but may be sold in portions that cover only a portion of the inner surface of the cabinet door 26 to provide for more compact transportation and convenient installation. The portions may be as small as one row 40 of spice containers 38, for example. In this case, or in the other embodiments described above, the attachment surface attached to the cabinet door 26 may in fact be a magnetic strip, for example a flexible polymeric magnetic material, that may be adhered to the inner surface 30 of the cabinet door 26 and the attachment element on the spice containers 38 may be a ferromagnetic material such as a strip of iron or iron containing material.
This invention relates to games and toys and in particular to a container for a board game in which a portion of the container provides the gameboard.
Board games are games typically using tokens or pieces located or moved over a printed board surface. Board games include ancient games such as chess and checkers as well as more modern counterparts such as Monopoly® and the like.
Modern implementations of the board game often use a paper or cardboard board surface that may be folded to fit within a shallow box receiving the flat folded board and having a periphery substantially equal to the dimensions of the flat folded board. The box provides a height of several inches to hold game play pieces such as cards tokens and the like.
The present invention provides a gameboard that, rather than folding flat, folds into an upwardly open container having a bottom wall and upstanding sidewalls to receive and retain cards, tokens, and the like. A lid providing a top wall and downwardly extending sidewalls fits around the folded gameboard to provide an enclosed container where the bottom wall of the folded gameboard forms the bottom wall of the container and the sidewalls of the container are provided by the overlapping sidewalls of the folded gameboard and the lid sidewalls.
The present inventor has recognized that this configuration may in fact reduce the cubic dimensions or volume of the container for standard sized board games thereby reducing a substantial component of the freight cost. The compact configuration further provides for an improved number and size of the game facings on the shelf incident to the greater height of the sidewalls and narrower footprint. In addition, eliminating the need for a separate box bottom reduces packaging costs and environmental impact.
These particular features and advantages may apply to only some embodiments falling within the claims and thus do not define the scope of the invention
a and 11b are fragmentary cross-sections through the fold lines of
Referring now to
Underlying the upper planar layer 212 are a set of substantially stiff panels 216, for example, of cardboard fitting together to tile the area covered by the upper layer 212 and yet to be separated by narrow channels or gutters 218 as will be described further below. In a preferred embodiment, the panel 216 provides five square panels 216 arranged in a cross about a central square panel 216′, each square panel 216 and 216′ having a height and width being approximately ⅓ the height and width of the layer 212 minus the width of the gutters 218.
Between the arms of the cross formed by the square panels 216 and 216′, providing areas substantially equal to the area of one square panel 216, are positioned two right isosceles triangular panels 216″ fitting together to fill this space with a gutter 218 and together to occupy substantially the area of one square panel 216. An interface between the right isosceles triangular panels 216″ provides a gutter oriented along an axis intersecting the center of the center panel 216′.
A second layer 220 of paper or vinyl may be placed below the panels 216 substantially equal in size to the layer 212 to be seamed to the layer 212 to sandwich the panel 216 between layers 212 and 220. Typically the panels 216, 216′ and 216″ will be glued or otherwise affixed to the layers 220 and 212 to provide a smooth and substantially rigid board playing system when the gameboard 210 is in its planar unfolded configuration as shown in
Referring now to
Referring now to
As shown in
In this fully folded configuration, a lid 236 may fit down over the gameboard 210 to retain it in the folded position, the lid providing an upper panel 238 substantially equal to the area of the base portion 222 and downwardly extending sidewalls 240 that may fit parallel to and outwardly adjacent to the sidewalls 224 holding the gameboard 210 in its folded configuration. As assembled, the lid 236 and the folded gameboard 210 provide a box whose outer walls are comprised of upper panel 238, sidewalls 240 and a lower surface of the base portion 222. The sidewalls 240 may be imprinted with merchandising information 242 as may be the bottom surface of the base portion 222 which provides a lower surface of the gameboard 210 not normally visible during gameplay.
It will be appreciated that the central panel 216′ may, in fact, be any rectangular shape to permit the invention to be used with rectangular prism as well as cubic boxes with appropriate adjustments of the dimensions of other panels 216.
The invention may generally provide a gameboard comprising: a rectangular upper flexible and lower flexible sheet, the upper flexible sheet providing a printed gameplay surface; a set of substantially rigid rectangular panels sandwiched between the upper flexible and lower flexible sheet, the panels arranged in three rectilinear rows and columns, with corner panels subdivided along diagonal lines passing between opposite corners of the upper flexible and lower flexible sheets; whereby the gameboard may fold into a substantially rectangular box open at a top.
This invention relates to cookware and in particular to a baking pan having multiple depressions for mini-pizzas.
Pizza is a baked flatbread typically topped with a tomato sauce and cheese. Pizza may be enjoyed in the home setting through a variety of options including carry out, delivery, frozen pizza, and partially baked pizza crusts that may be topped by the consumer.
The present invention provides a baking pan and method for convenient preparation of mini pizzas in a conventional oven. The baking pan provides a set of shallow pans sized to convert a single biscuit from commercially refrigerated biscuit dough into a properly sized mini pizza crust that may be topped as desired by the home chef.
Referring to
The columns of pans 302 may be joined together by a metallic support bar 304 passing horizontally between the columns to which the flange 303 of each pan 302 may be spot welded at a tangent point or attached by other well-known means. Outer support bars 306 may flank the columns and be attached at their ends along with the ends of the metallic support bar 304 to upper and lower support bars 308 to form a generally rectangular frame supporting the pans 302. Overlapping portions of the flanges 303 of the pans 302 may be welded to these outer support bars 306 and upper and lower support bars 308 as well. In addition, overlapping flanges 303 of adjacent pans 302 in each column may also be attached to each other by spot welding or other means to provide an integrated assembly having dimensions of approximately 12 by 18 inches comporting with a standard cookie sheet size to permit use in most ovens and ready storage. The bars 304, 306, and 308 may be, for example 3/16 steel rods formed and welded together.
Each pan 302 presents an upwardly open shallow cylindrical vessel having a dimension of substantially six inches in diameter and one half inch in depth although the depth may be readily varied to be as much as one inch and as little as one quarter inch. The area of the base of the pan will be approximately 28 square inches. Desirably, the volume of each pan 302 is such as to receive a single serving or biscuit 310 from a can 312 of refrigerated biscuits such as Pillsbury Grands®, commercially available from General Mills, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minn. Each biscuit 310 is approximately 58 grams by weight and provides a heat acting leavening ingredient, flour, and shortening as is understood in the art.
Referring to
It will be appreciated that the pans 302 need not be circular but may, for example, be square and that they may be arranged in any tiling pattern not necessarily comprising rectilinear rows and columns of the preferred embodiment. Further, it will be appreciated that the pans may be formed in an alternative embodiment from a single sheet of metal shallow drawn to form the pans 302. In this case, the pans are attached together by the common material of the sheet. The pans may be constructed of a 13-18 gauge aluminum or 19-12 gauge steel. In one embodiment, the bottom of the pans 302 may be perforated with holes to allow the escape of water vapor and to produce a crisper crust.
The invention may generally provide for a mini-pizza cookware pan comprising: a set of at least four shallow dishes having substantially planar bottoms with upstanding sidewalls with a height less than one inch, the dishes arranged and attached to each other in columns and rows to provide an integrated cooking unit receivable on an oven shelf, each dish having a bottom surface area of substantially 28 square inches.
Certain terminology is used herein for purposes of reference only, and thus is not intended to be limiting. For example, terms such as “upper”, “lower”, “above”, “below”, “clockwise”, and “counterclockwise” refer to directions in the drawings to which reference is made. Terms such as “front”, “back”, “rear”, “bottom” and “side”, describe the orientation of portions of the component within a consistent but arbitrary frame of reference which is made clear by reference to the text and the associated drawings describing the component under discussion. Such terminology may include the words specifically mentioned above, derivatives thereof, and words of similar import. Similarly, the terms “first”, “second” and other such numerical terms referring to structures do not imply a sequence or order unless clearly indicated by the context.
When introducing elements or features of the present disclosure and the exemplary embodiments, the articles “a”, “an”, “the” and “said” are intended to mean that there are one or more of such elements or features. The terms “comprising”, “including” and “having” are intended to be inclusive and mean that there may be additional elements or features other than those specifically noted. It is further to be understood that the method steps, processes, and operations described herein are not to be construed as necessarily requiring their performance in the particular order discussed or illustrated, unless specifically identified as an order of performance. It is also to be understood that additional or alternative steps may be employed.
