The Best Kitchen Drawer Organizer is Actually a Utensil Rack

By Amanda Sims

A kitchen tool rack—yes, the kind that requires your tools get hung up on display—is a kitchen drawer organizer in disguise: Adding one will help you eliminate in-drawer clutter because so much of it will be on display. Consider: Even the most organized home cook knows that things behind closed drawers can get disheveled quickly. (Perhaps it's the whole "if you can't see it, it doesn't exist" mentality that we all occasionally must subscribe to.) Hence, one of the simplest ways to guarantee that your kitchen stays a little bit tidier is to free some of those tools from their hiding places and put them in plain sight. A simple kitchen tool rack, which can be mounted against a square of backsplash so your trustiest tools can hang from it, is the best (and, promise, most glamorous) way to do this.

Yes, you'll have to be a choosier shopper, electing to purchase only quality tools you'll feel good about showing off, but then they'll act as decoration rather than tarnish.

In AD's April issue, Mayer Rus describes the March and Union Studio-designed test kitchen in Goop's Los Angeles headquarters saying, "like the rest of the office, [it] feels quintessentially Goop: smart, efficient, and beautiful." Prominently featured in the space's design is a tool rack, suspended from the lowest shelf along a cinder-block wall. Below it, not a drawer is in sight. (With so many tools on display, they no longer needed kitchen drawers at all.)

A pink plaster wall and brass kitchen rack accent a white-tiled kitchen by Jersey Ice Cream Co.

Tara Mangini and Percy Bright, the duo behind Jersey Ice Cream Co., love incorporating utensil racks into their renovation projects. "I think it's the perfect way to up the aesthetics and functionality of your kitchen," Tara says. "You can show off your kitchen tools and have them easily accessible." And while over the sink and over the oven are both traditional places to hang a utensil rack, other narrow slivers or big sweeping walls could work. "If you find yourself wanting there to be an open shelf but don't quite have the depth for it to not intrude into the space," Tara says, a utensil rack might be the perfect solution.

Furthermore, she insists that you don't need to spend a fortune to have a beautiful one in your home. "Online Metals is a total godsend for getting unlacquered brass bars in the exact width and length that you want," she says. "Just be sure to find brackets first that will fit the diameter of the bar and look right in your space. Working the other way around always seems to bring me bad luck."