I Just Discovered a Totally Free Trick for Organizing My “Nightmare” Baking Sheet Cabinet (Wish I’d Tried It Years Ago!)

In the last decade or so, I’ve amassed quite the array of baking pans and cookie sheets. You’d think I bake frequently with how many I’ve got lying around, but nope. I just like having a well-appointed kitchen in case I do get the hankering to bake cookies or banana bread, and there’s nothing worse than not having the right pans around when the mood strikes.

Actually, I take that back. There is one thing that’s worse — and that’s the fact that, ever since I started collecting baking sheets, they’ve turned my kitchen cabinets into a storage nightmare.

I mean it. They’re all lying down on top of each other, haphazardly, messily, taking up way more space than they need to. Plus, every time I use one, I have to take out every single cookie sheet and baking rack to get to the one I need — which is not only time-consuming, but makes everything even messier and harder to clean up.

Suffice it to say, I was ready for a change. And then, out of the blue, I discovered an organization hack that was ready to do just that. While perusing The Kitchn, I found a new way to organize and store my baking pans. The best way to do it? By storing them vertically instead of horizontally!

My kitchen cabinets aren’t necessarily ideal — most of them are too short to store taller items, since they have shelves in the middle, so figuring out exactly how to keep things neat and tidy can be a challenge. Would this cookie sheet organizing trick work for me? I decided to put it to the test. 

I started by — you guessed it — pulling out all of my baking sheets, baking racks, and cookie sheets. I tried lining them up vertically in the same cabinet, but unfortunately they didn’t fit that way. Most of my cabinets are too short, and they definitely came up short in the vertical cookie sheet department. 

I started to panic, and then I remembered that I have one solitary tall cabinet in my kitchen. It’s where I’ve been storing odds and ends, like my blender, hand mixer, and a collection of rarely used coffee mugs and cups. I got down on my hands and knees, pulled all of that out of the cabinet, and got to work with the cookie sheets.

As I started lining them up vertically inside the cabinet, I actually smiled and said out loud, “Ooooh, this looks so much better.” I organized them in height order, with the tallest on the left and the shortest on the right, so it’s as aesthetically pleasing as it is organized. I love that I can actually see my collection now, and it’s way easier to grab what I need without causing a pan avalanche. I’m also especially happy that my beloved Caraway Baking Sheet won’t get scratched while pulling something out.

Now that my cookie sheets are all organized beautifully (freeing up all that extra cabinet space), I think it’s time to pull one out and bake something. Chocolate chip cookies, coming right up!