MANFIELD, Mass. — Seventeen-year-old Danielle Donovan turned her carpentry skills into a lucrative summer job.
The senior at Mansfield High School designed and built what she calls a Smorganizer. It’s a wooden caddy that can fit almost anything you want in it, including cans and bottles and, of course, a campfire favorite.
“A lot of people like the smores, especially people with kids,” Donovan said.
Donovan was planning on getting a typical teenage summer job, but she was concerned about putting her 80-year-old grandmother, who lives with her family, at additional risk. So Danielle decided to sell the Smorganizers online and at local farmer’s markets. Often times she says many people are shocked that a young high school girl builds them herself.
“A lot of people walking by they make excuses to themselves because they don’t believe that I make them. They think I buy and resell them or they think my dad makes them or something just because I’m a girl,” she said.
Donovan has worked alongside her father Joe since she was a child but she makes the Smorganizers all by herself.
Her grandfather, who passed away a few years ago, was also a carpenter. So the love of woodworking is in Donovan’s blood.
“I have all his tools so I kind of just grew up making stuff and doing stuff, just a life skill type of thing. It shocked me people didn’t know,” she said.
Danielle was originally planning on only selling the Smorganizers through the summer, but they’ve become so popular she says she will keep selling through Christmas. For more information on the Smorganizer, click here.
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