I’ve been personally using the Cocoon Grid-It for a few months now and I’ve really grown into its versatility as a solution for storing cables and the various odds and ends that wind up in the pockets of my ITS Discreet Messenger Bag.
Despite the plethora of pockets and organization we’ve built into the bag, I still wind up with a hand full of cables when I reach into to find that specific one I’m looking for. When I first spied the Grid-It, I was intrigued, but not fully confident that it would work as I needed it to. Nevertheless, I purchased one and will share my thoughts on them here today.
GRID-IT!
As mentioned above, I’ve been using the Grid-It panels for around six months now and actually found myself upgrading to the larger size as the months went on. What started as a test to see how it functioned, became a challenge to see if it could accommodate all the cords and cables I carried. I primarily use the ITS Discreet Messenger Bag as a laptop bag, off-body concealed carry bag and trauma kit pouch all in one. The only thing missing from the versatility of the bag, was to manage all the cables that come along with always needing to stay charged and connected.
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Enter the Grid-It. The smaller sized panel you’ll see in the photos is what I started with. I actually had everything shown on the larger panel on that smaller one at some point too. What happened though is that by moving to the larger panel, it actually decreased the bulk that the smaller panel took up. By spreading things out to the larger panel, it actually made more space inside my bag. This may seem obvious on first thought, but it took me a bit to get to this realization.
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I like the way the elastic straps feature impregnated lines of rubber running through them to aid in gripping your items. I’ve always been apprehensive of elastic stretching out after repeated use, but this has been holding up fairly well so far. I try not to pull the strips too much to avoid stretching them out.
There’s no particular pattern that repeats with the inner-weaved strips, which can be a hinderance when laying out the items you’re looking to store. You may be left with a smaller item but only have a larger channel left to store it in and need to go back and reconfigure other items to make room.
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Each panel has a stiffener sewn in to it to add rigidity and the larger panel features a full-width zipper running through the back to create a pocket for extra storage. The Grid-It could also double as a mouse pad in a pinch. The smaller GPG7 panel I reference here measures 7.25″ x 9.25″ and the larger GPG10 measures 12″ x 8″.
Available in black, grey, blue and red, each panel is bordered with binding tape, which I think is a nice touch. The only thing this larger size panel I’m running can’t accommodate is my MacBook Pro charger, but I’ve been eying the 15″ x 9.5″ GPG20 that will still fit the width of my bag, but give me some extra width and height to “Grid-It!”
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Just like most Apple products, the Grid-It is designed in the US, but manufactured in China. They’re available directly from Cocoon or here from our friends at Tactical Distributors.