How an $8 Key Holder Can Make More Space in Your Kitchen Cabinets

If you know our Lifestyle Director, Lisa Freedman, you may that know she “didn’t love” (read: hated) that pervasive organizing tip to hang your measuring cups or spoons on the back of your cabinet doors. The thought of getting those absolutely necessary-but-kind-of-messy cooking tools out of your drawers and into an underutilized storage spot, is appealing, it’s true. 

Read more: The Supposedly Brilliant Kitchen Hack I Didn’t Love and Immediately Undid

But knowing that hanging things from your cabinet doors causes another problem is enough to put the breaks on a supposedly brilliant move. Lisa’s complaint in a nutshell: Hanging things on cabinet doors that swing open and closed is terrifyingly noisy. The newly housed measuring cups and spoons create a clatter that’s enough to spike your adrenaline because it sounds like things are falling and maybe you need to take cover. 

Fight or flight responses caused by organizing hacks certainly do not a calm kitchen make. So that’s a hard no from us on the measuring-cups-on-doors thing. 

But, what if there were a way to get your measuring cups, measuring spoons, and other small cooking tools out of drawer purgatory and into that underutilized space — so that they are out of the way but accessible, organized but quiet?

Instead of putting your hooks on the back of a cabinet door (which, we’ll point out again, moves), the (ahem) key is to put them inside the cabinet, on the sides or the back wall.

You can make things even easier on yourself and, instead of using individual Command Hooks, you can try a one-and-done key holder. Turns out, key holders, like the one below, are perfect for hanging small cooking tools. The fact that they come as a one-piece unit with several hooks means they’re sure to look nice and tidy (you don’t have to try to line up individual little hooks). They also come with adhesive stickers, which means no holes in your cabinetry.

We initially wanted to suggest these key holders for measuring spoons and small cooking tools, but we realized that they’re great for bulkier measuring cups (see the photo above), stand mixer attachments, and so much more. It’s really a perfect cabinet-organizing hack that even traumatized kitchen organizers might be tempted to try. Looking at you, Lisa.