As a Pro Cook, I Swear by This Surprising $20 Tool That Makes Cooking and Cleaning So Much Easier
I am a huge dolly fan. No, I’m not talking about the wildly talented singer Dolly Parton (though I do love her). I’m talking about the humble but helpful caster dolly — a flat platform on four wheels. While they’re most often used by movers to transport heavy things from one place to another, I use dollies on the daily in my home kitchen. In fact, I also have two dollies in my workspace! Why, oh why, would I write a love letter to such a humdrum contraption — especially one that doesn’t traditionally live in a kitchen? Let me explain.
I guess it’s kind of my thing to take furnishings from other rooms of the house and dedicate them to the kitchen if it makes sense, works well, and saves me some money. For instance, I bought a garage workbench to use as my kitchen counter because it’s super long (80 inches!), rock-solid stable, adjustable in height, and costs a fraction of what kitchen outfitters charge for a similar-quality counter. I mounted clear bath organizers on my kitchen walls to organize my myriad pasta-making tools because they let me see everything clearly and have built-in drainage for excess flour to fall away from my tools as they sit. And don’t even get me started on how many rulers and paintbrushes I’ve stolen from my daughter’s arts and crafts supply cabinet to reassign to my pastry toolbox. So, I guess if you know me, it’s not that surprising that I have several moving dollies in my kitchen.
Both my reach-in freezer chest and my trash can sit atop dollies underneath my floating kitchen island. I like to rearrange my kitchen frequently, depending on what projects I’m working on, or just fluctuating aesthetic whims. Because most appliances are heavy and bulky, the dollies make them effortless to roll around to my heart’s content.
I practice a deep daily clean of the kitchen floor — just like you do in a restaurant kitchen at the close of each shift. The best way to clean a floor is to move everything out of the way and really get in there with your broom and/or mop. The dolly makes this easy, even with incredibly heavy appliances, like my freezer.
Have you ever looked under your trash can? How about behind it? I’ve looked under and around more rubbish bins than I can count in my 15 years of professional cooking. Too many times, I’ve uncovered a sticky ring of who-knows-what coated in dust particles of you-don’t-want-to-know-what. When you keep your trash can on a dolly, this mysterious buildup doesn’t happen. It’s just so much easier to pull the whole trash can out, thoroughly clean the floor underneath, and pick up all that debris that almost made it into the bin (but landed on the floor instead) when the can isn’t rooted. And if you like to prep in different areas of your kitchen, you can just roll the trash to wherever you are (instead of running back and forth to a stationary trash receptacle).
To date, I’ve purchased two of the exact same dolly. (I liked the first one so much that I bought a matching one about a year later.) If you decide to get your appliances rolling, look for dollies with appropriately wide bases. I opted for a design with a 19 1/2″x14 1/2″ platform. You also want to make sure your dolly has at least two swivel caster wheels so you can smoothly move in 360 degrees with ease.
Buy: MaxWorks 80854 Polypropylene Dolly, 200-lb Capacity, $21.95