The One Tool That Saves Me the Most Storage Space in My Tiny Kitchen Is Under $15

Outfitting a small kitchen comes with its own unique set of challenges. Along with carving out enough countertop space for meal prep, you’re faced with the tricky task of finding room to store all of your kitchen tools with little to no cabinet or surface space. 

One of the hardest kitchen utensils to find storage space for are big, bulky colanders. Whether you stash them in a cabinet, on your countertop, or on top of your fridge, they always wind up creating visual clutter while occupying a lot of valuable kitchen real estate. 

This is no news to home organizer and interior stylist Katrina Green of Badass Homelife, who says her clients often struggle with finding the right place to store colanders in a small kitchen. “Since colanders are typically round and take up a good amount of space, it’s hard to put them away in a tight cabinet,” she tells Apartment Therapy. “This means small space dwellers usually have no other choice but to display their colanders in plain sight.”

After 11 years of living in cramped New York City apartments with teeny tiny kitchens, I, too, felt I had no other choice but to store my colander on top of my fridge. That is, until I stumbled upon a brilliant and surprisingly affordable solution to all of my colander storage woes. Designed by former Dyson design engineer Ran Merkazy, cofounder of RMDLO, the Armadillo Colander is every bit as easy to store as it is simple to use. Inspired by the shelled mammals of the same name, which roll their bodies into a ball when they sense danger, as well as the Japanese art of origami, this transforming colander is composed of stainless steel leaves that fan out to form a full-sized strainer, and then collapse into a flat strip that can easily be stored in a drawer, cabinet, or on a hanging hook. “It folds down flat,” Green explains. “So it can be stored in all sorts of small, tight spaces, including a cookie sheet cabinet or the bottom of an oven.”

Engineered with a honeycomb pattern that allows its metal leaves to effortlessly slide over each other, this clever colander can fold down to one-tenth of its in-use size. It also boasts two heat-resistant, BPA-free handles, that allow you to also use it as an over-the-pot steamer for cooking veggies because the handles prevent it from slipping and sliding. 

While this particular colander-slash-steamer will run you about 30 bucks, there are lots of inexpensive alternatives that collapse into a smaller size (sans the steaming capabilities) for a fraction of the cost. Here are three at Amazon for under $15. 

Along with freeing up coveted kitchen cabinet and countertop space, collapsible colanders can also save you room in your dishwasher, too. And as home organizer, interior stylist, and Sweet Digs founder Pia Thompson points out, they also help make meal prep (and post-cooking cleanup) a breeze.

“It’s likely that you use a colander every time you cook, for things like draining pasta water and juices, straining foods, and of course, washing foods. And because of their compact shape, collapsible colanders are easy to pull out and put away quickly,” she explains. “Plus, if you purchase a heat-and-stick-resistant silicone style, you don’t have to worry about hot pasta melting or getting stuck on it, which makes cleaning them so much easier.”

If you already have a full-sized colander that you love, and don’t mind showing it off in your kitchen, then Green says there are space-savvy ways you can store it (so you won’t have to buy an extra one you don’t really need). “I use Command Hooks to store my one-handled mesh strainer [like this one] behind a cabinet door since the space it takes up aligns with what I already have stored within the cabinet,” she says. 

For those who have colanders that have two handles and stand by themselves, Green suggests storing it in a cabinet or on a counter with smaller items inside of it, such as mixing bowls, soup bowls, and ramekins. “You can easily stack mixing bowls inside the colander to reduce the amount of space taken up in your cabinet,” she explains.

Bottom line: Whether you’re in need of a small kitchen-friendly colander or just an efficient way to stash the one you already own, storing your go-to strainer in a cramped space doesn’t have to be a difficult or pricey endeavor.