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The Bottom Line

If you're looking for a storage system that can be assembled in nothing flat and disassembled equally fast to create another configuration or to be moved to another room, Yube Cube modular furniture is the way to go.

I was looking for a new way to store the hundreds of cookbooks I have. A conventional 6-foot bookcase made of pressed wood served my needs until the shelves began to buckle under the weight of the sheer number of large books.

What's more, if you're familiar with pressed wood items, you know they're unwieldy and HEAVY, making rearranging furniture something one has to think twice about.

Well, not anymore. Enter Yube Cube. This system of modular furniture cubes is eco-friendly (they're made of what's left of sugarcane after the juice is squeezed out plus bamboo), can be personalized with photos and customized with doors, drawers and shelves, and take minutes to put together. Honest! It took me all of one hour to put together 16 cubes.

I suppose the only downside was I had trouble connecting them side to side (not top to bottom). But that was me. The other downside is that while the 14.7-inch-square cubes are nice and deep, they're not terribly wide, so not many books fit side by side in one cube. Still, they merit four stars in my book.

Suggested Retail Price: Varies by quantity but generally $29.50 to $27 per cube + S&H

Where to Buy:Online

Would I Buy It? Definitely
How the Manufacturer Describes It

YUBE: The modular, customizable furniture system for personalized home design and storage needs.

• Easy: Four sides snap together with a slide-in back; steel frame locks and corner clips push into place to make a rigid structure.
  
  

• Customization:: Use the online customizer to create ANY configuration for ANY room or space. The possibilities are endless.
  
  
• Personalization: Stack them up to build the structure you need, or tear it apart and do it again somewhere else; it's that simple. And it's fun to personalize with your own customized doors and accessories that are unique to you. Consumers can integrate their favorite patterns, colors or uploaded photos for unique home décor.
  
  
• Organization: Add drawers and/or shelves to YUBE Cubes for optimum organization.
  
  
• Eco-friendly and Durable: Being almost edible, the Yube outer panels you see are made from sugarcane, only someone got there first to extract the sweet juice. Rather than burn the remaining fiber as waste, it's pulped for reuse and pressed into Yube panels. As with many natural materials, each panel displays it's own unique pattern. The frames of the Yube are made from Woodlite, a proprietary compound of nontoxic moldable plastic mixed with bamboo, the planet's fastest growing renewable wood resource. Woodlite utilizes 20%-30% less nonrenewable resources than similarly molded products. It even smells good unlike regular plastic, there is a pleasing light sweet aroma to remind you this is no ordinary material.

Pros

• Yubes take only minutes to put together and don't require tools. They can be easily assembled and disassembled when moving or reorganizing a room.
  
  
• They are customizable, and perfect not only for books but all types of storage -- bathroom, bedroom, coffee table, kids' rooms and play areas.
  
  
• Yubes are made of eco-friendly materials and each cube can bear 60 pounds of weight even though, when fully assembled, they weigh only 4.4 pounds. The cubes can be stacked six high without losing integrity. Depending on its width, a flat-screen TV can be placed safely across three to five cubes.
  
  
• Online videos show exactly how to assemble the cubes.

Cons

• I had trouble horizontally locking together the sides of a series of four cubes by four cubes (for a total of 1 cubes), but I was doing this alone. It might be easier with an extra pair of hands. Still, the vertical towers of four cubes each when pushed together still looked like a seamless four-cube-wide by four-cube-high bookshelf.
  
  
• One box of cubes was missing a steel bracket from the packet of enclosed assembly materials.
  
  
• The perfectly square cubes are deep but not so wide, making it hard to accommodate as many books as my conventional bookcase held.

Yube Cube Specifications

Each Yube Unit

Weight: 4.4 pounds
External Dimensions: 14.17 inches cubed
Internal Dimensions: 13 inches cubed
Materials: Frame is made of a Woodlite proprietary compound of moldable plastic mixed with bamboo. Woodlite is recyclable with regular waste polypropolene #5. The panels are made of reconstituted sugar cane waste fibers, which are biodegradable and compostable. The frame corner locks are made of pressed steel.
Manufacturer's Site

Disclosure: Review samples were provided by the manufacturer. For more information, please see our Ethics Policy.