Nice catch: Keeping cabinet doors shut

There are many reasons to love this type of hinge: it opens and closes very smoothly, is adjustable to ensure the doors hang plumb and level, and the self-closing feature eliminates the need for any additional hardware to hold the door closed. That is, as long as the hinge is healthy.

You see, inside each hinge is a tiny piece of spring steel that's used to snap the door closed. The problem is that spring steel is rather brittle, and over time these small pieces can break. As a result, the door will stay partially open. In my case, the doors hung at least 4 inches from the cabinets, which was both annoying and unkempt looking.

I thought about replacing the hinges, until I discovered that they cost about $10 apiece. Since I had several cabinets with impotent doors, I came up with a much more economical solution (read: a cheap fix). 

 I went to the hardware store and bought a handful of roller catches. Each catch consists of two parts. The first part, which gets screwed to the inside of the cabinet, is a metal bracket that's fitted with two spring-loaded cylindrical plastic rollers.

When the door is closed, the arrowhead-shaped piece slides into the first part, where it's gripped tightly by the two rollers.

The spring-loaded rollers are tiny, but plenty strong enough to hold the door firmly closed.

It took less less than five minutes to install each roller catch, but best of all, the catches only costs about 90 cents apiece.