Dealing with the Darn Lids

One of the challenges of kitchen cabinet organizing is how to best store pots and pans with lids. Here are a few ways to handle that.

1. Susan Pinsky, in her book Organizing Solutions for People with Attention Deficit Disorder, recommends the following: "Reduce your collection to four or six of your most used pots . . . If you have culled your collection down to four, it should not pose much of a problem to find a cabinet . . . where all your pots can fit side by side, no pan in front of or blocking another, and no pot stacked on another. Storing your pots un-nested, side by side, will also allow you to store pot lids directly on the pots - a method that will forever simplify your life."

The New York Times had an article back in May that also posits that four to six pots and pans are enough. The author also suggests that you might not need individual lids for all of them!




2. You can use the Pantree organizer, which also allows you to store pans with the lids on them.




3. If storing the lids on the pans won't work for you, you might want a lid rack. (Update August 9, 2009: That original picture is a Rubbermaid product, which I'm not seeing any more. But you can get other similar products.)




4. For ease of access, you can install a roll-out lid rack. (Here's another version.)




5. To save more space, you can get a cabinet door lid rack.

6. You could also use something as simple as a dishpan to hold the lids.

7. And here's a creative idea: use a towel rack!

[First photo by Stitch, from Flickr]