Unexpected Favorite: Vintage Drying Rack

When I found this vintage laundry drying rack, I thought looked unusual, charming, and potentially useful. Little did I know just what a handy kitchen tool it would become. Click through to see my very favorite use for it…

The wooden rack consists of five arms that can be folded up to save space when not in use ... but I find in my kitchen it's almost always in use! Two of the arms have names penciled on them – Peggy and Sandy. I could erase the names but I like how they add to the history of the piece.

I use the rack to dry dish towels, plastic bags, herbs, and – my favorite – strands of homemade pasta. (Pictured below is a batch of beet fettuccine.)

I purchased the vintage rack at Lawson-Fenning East in Los Angeles. It may be hard to find this exact one but there are similar reproduction racks available.

• Find it:
Popular Eight Arm Wall Clothes Dryer, $22.95 at Lehman's
Reproduction Vintage Drying Rack, $22.98 at Wireless Catalog

Comments (8)

This is fabulous. Now I want beet fettuccine.

I have one of these I got at an antique fair years ago. I use it, though rarely, for its original purpose: drying clothing. I really like the uses you've found for it in the kitchen though.

So cool, Emily!! That pasta is gorgeous.

My dad has a somewhat similar drying rack for dishtowels (the arms don't fold up, but rather rotate to fan out horizontally). I've always been jealous of it, but it never even occurred to me that you could use it for things that <em>not even dishtowels</em>! I'm now super jealous.

i have one of those in our apartment bathroom! up until this recent move, i had never seen one before

Wow! This is such a great idea and that pasta looks amazing.

I've been wanting to put pegboard up in the pantry... I bet I could easily find some dowels or chopsticks or something that I could stick into the pegboard to create a rack like this! Thanks for the inspiration!