Ina Garten’s Ingenious (and Easy!) Hack Will Keep Your Knives Sharper Longer

If you find yourself sharpening your knives way more often than you think you should be, the quality of the blade might not be to blame — the way you store your knives may be causing the issue. Ina Garten took to her Instagram recently to share how she keeps her blades sharper for longer just by doing one simple thing when putting her knives back into her knife block: She stores them upside-down.

“It’s really important to have sharp knives, and I try not to do things that dull them,” Garten wrote in the caption of her post. “I choose knife blocks that hold most of the knives sideways. However, any knives that are held vertically, I have another trick for saving the blade.”

In her video, Garten explained that she realized she put her knives into the vertical slots of her block differently after someone asked her to explain the method to her madness. 

“If you put [the knife] in right side [down], the usual way, as you put it in, the blade is scraping against the wood, and I don’t think it’s good for the blade,” she said. “So I put it in upside down, and I think it saves the blade. Does that make sense?”

It absolutely does!

“My in-laws do this!” one person wrote in the comments. “I always thought it was strange until they explained.” Another person added, “*Goes to turn all of her knives over. *”

“My mind is blown!! Great idea!!” one person wrote. It really does just make sense when you take a second to think about it.

Of course, as Garten mentioned, this hack only works with knife blocks that have vertical slots and slots that don’t have built-in knife sharpeners, as some do. But if you have a knife block like Garten’s, then you definitely have to give this trick a go. You may just find that you’re sharpening your knives less often (and therefore getting less frustrated in the kitchen!).