A Smart Storage Hack for Those Short Upper Kitchen Cabinets

Unless you remodeled your kitchen from scratch, with a custom layout and cabinets, it’s probably not perfectly suited to your needs (I’m looking at you renters). But, there are still lots of ways to configure your space—and especially those plain basic boxes on the wall—and make it work for you today. Take note of this clever project that squeezes every drop of storage out of your cabinets, especially those shorter ones above the fridge and stove.

Baking sheets, although small and not too cumbersome, can be a pain to store. You can nest them together, which is all fine and good until you need the biggest one on the bottom. Plus, you can’t exactly stack anything on top of them—and that’s a waste of space.

Use tension rods to store baking sheets upright in your cabinets!

Because you’ll file them vertically, instead of horizontally, this method lets you use the full height of a cabinet. Pictured here is open shelving, but they also make a good fit for short kitchen cabinets. And you’ll be able to grab what you need without having to pull out other things you don’t need.

You can buy vertical file holders (the kind you use on your desk at work) to help you do essentially the same thing, but I find the tension rod method to be sturdier and better because it’s more customizable.

Small tension rods are inexpensive—about $2 to $5 each—and they create a secure enough barrier that they could even be used to organize cutting boards and serving platters. Plus, because you’re “installing” them yourself, you can customize the width! So if you want to slide a relatively wide muffin tin in next to a skinny plastic cutting board, you can create just the right-sized space for each item without wasting valuable inches in between.

This hack has become so popular that now that when you search Amazon for the rods, the top-billed items are actually marketed as cabinet rods instead of curtain rods! And they come in pretty small sizes, too, so you can really fit them into any size of shelf. Smart, right?

This post original ran on Kitchn. See it now: The Most Clever Solution for Storing Your Baking Sheets

• Here’s How Hidden Cabinet Hacks Dramatically Increased My Kitchen Storage
• The Supposedly Brilliant Kitchen Storage Hack I Wound Up Hating
• Storage & Style Upgrades: Super Smart IKEA Hacks for Your Kitchen