The Little Organizer I Didn’t Realize My Kitchen Was Missing
The other day, amid a very deep clean of my apartment, I cleared everything off of my kitchen counters. I noticed that my cutting boards, all propped up against one another, had leaned against the wall and scratched the paint, leaving a pretty noticeable mark. It got me thinking about how to better store my cutting boards, as well as my similarly-shaped and difficult-to-stash-away baking sheets and cooling racks.
While I’m blessed with a lot of counter space, my Brooklyn apartment does not have built-in cabinets big enough to fit these particular large essentials. The only space, if I were to lay them flat on top of one another, is at the bottom of my IKEA kitchen island. But, even then, they would poke out a bit. What’s more, pulling cutting boards out of a heavy stack and putting them back is, while objectively a minor inconvenience, annoying when you do it day after day. And when you cook as much as I do — or as much as we all do right now — your kitchen should work for you, period.
To solve this storage problem, I went down an internet rabbit hole. Lo and behold I found cutting board stands, an invention not previously on my radar, but, wow, if it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for. Turns out, they come in all shapes, sizes, and designs and are as ubiquitous as magnetic knife strips and drawer organizers. Not only that, but if you’re lacking in both counter space and storage space, you can find ones that mount on the wall or slide underneath a shelf or on the outside of a cabinet. Some are made specifically just for cutting boards, while others are larger and more accommodating for those larger items like platters, baking sheets, and more.
I like that, armed with one, I can put my cutting boards back in their same place. Only now, they won’t damage the wall. And I can easily pull out one without sending the whole stack sliding. (If I’ve learned anything from Kitchn, it’s that filing is always better than stacking!) I like the bigger racks for inside cabinets (should you be lucky enough to have them!), too. Plus, how pretty is that first one on this list?
