The Simple Kitchen Utensil Storage Solution That Frees Up Drawer Space

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While they're fairly small and seem innocuous, kitchen utensils can present one of the largest challenges when you're figuring out how to organize your kitchen. They're strangely shaped, which makes it difficult to reach for one quickly when cooking. What's more, you typically need quite a few to actually create the dishes you have in mind. As such, they often end up unceremoniously dumped in a kitchen drawer, ready to pile up, rattle around, and make accessing anything feel nearly impossible. (Looking at you, potato masher). Thankfully, there's a more streamlined solution: hanging up utensils so they're on display. This is perfect for both maximizing a small kitchen and improving your workflow in a large cooking space.

It's time to look at your cabinets. Don't worry — you won't actually have to rearrange your carefully stacked collection of dishes to pull off this organizational idea. Instead, consider using empty space along the side or front of your kitchen cabinets to hold hanging storage for your cooking utensils. While this might take away slightly from your kitchen's sleek look, it will help to keep utensils visible, accessible, and out of the way. Options like this Cozyto LuxTray U1-Pro utensil holder are perfect for this task, but you could also consider using a wall-mounted rack with hooks from Cociat if you only intend to hang a few of your most-used cooking tools. This storage method is similar to the idea behind the thrift flip that keeps kitchen towels off the countertops.

Once you've picked up your organizer of choice, it's time to think about placement. Tools need to be close to where you'll actually use them, so consider mounting your organizer on a cabinet close to your stove. You should also think about which utensils you use the most — if you have a ton of items that aren't used often and only serve one purpose, stow these away and keep only your most reached-for utensils visible. This will make it easier to find what you're looking for at a glance, and cut down on the visual overstimulation that might be making your kitchen look cluttered.

If you're not a fan of your kitchen tools sitting out 24/7, it's also possible to follow this same line of thinking and mount utensil holders on the inside of your cabinets. Many holders, like the Kes over-the-door kitchen towel rack, also provide convenient hooks behind the cabinet doors, making this a great solution if you're a renter or don't want to damage your cabinets with drill holes. While you'll still have to open up a cabinet door to grab what you need while you're cooking, the ideal storage system will depend heavily on how you move around your kitchen and whether you care about seeing kitchen tools on display. Either way, you'll be able to free up a likely overloaded kitchen drawer, so this simple switch should have a ripple effect that results in an overall more organized cooking space.