The Little Organizer I Didn’t Realize My Kitchen Was Missing

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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?