Organizing and Storing Piles of Pots and Pans

You can buy official pot and pan racks or you can get creative and improvise pot and pan racks. It depends on your budget, your creativity and your home decor likes and dislikes. You'll find plenty of real pot racks and pan racks on these pages and below in the additional resource pages listed.

One creative option is to put pots and pans on a vertical freestanding shelving unit (Kmart sells some easy assembly ones for $25). An audio stand meant to hold DVD/VCR players on its individual shelves has the right shelf height for holding frying pans. The shelf spaces are slim. Put one frying pan on each shelf.

But if you buy a catch-all shelving unit with shelves spaced further apart, then those shelves are perfect for holding pots, such as stock pots in particular.

Sometimes pots, especially deep stock pots, look better and are more organized on freestanding pot racks or shelves whereas pans look better and are more organized on hanging pot racks or pot hooks.

This six-shelf Free-Standing Pot Rack below is from Stacks and Stacks. It would work great in a kitchen or dining room corner for pots. Sometimes free-standing pot racks may also be referred to as "standing pot racks" or "cookware stands".

Or you could put pots on decorative ladders, sold as home decor accent furniture for plants or knick-knacks; these are decorative shelves shaped like ladders, not real ladders that you stand on--look in home decor and shelving sections of stores. Also, look in the bookcase section at online stores because you see some leaning bookcases that look like this too.

A pyramid display stand would work elegantly for storing pots in plain sight. With a pyramid, you'd have bigger shelf on the bottom and each shelf above would be a little smaller than the one below it. It may not be labeled "pot rack" but it sure will work as one and it looks good too. Can't you see putting your biggest stock pot on the bottom shelf and then putting matching pots on the other shelves in order of size so that your smallest pot is on top.

For a contemporary look, you also could use stackable square cubes, sometimes called stepping cube storage (when their stacked like a stair case) or other titles. Store one pot per cube. If you buy individual storage cubes, make the cubes stack vertically and then expand them horizontally as needed. Also store small appliances in the individual cubes. The top of the cubes gives you more counter space that you can use in food preparation or for storage or display items. If you plan to use the top of the cubes as a counter, you should buy solid cubes versus the cubes comprised of wire. Otherwise, the wire cubes look equally stylish for a kitchen.

You also can hang pots from the ceiling or underneath cabinets. Many pot and pan racks are constructed with sturdy, round steel frames and multiple hooks for holding your pots and pans. You mount the racks on the wall or hang them from the ceiling.

Some even have a shelf built in to hold your cookbooks or whatever you want to place on them. The hooks for holding your pans are below the shelf bottom. You mount this type on the wall.

Sometimes while pots fit and look nice on a shelf or freestanding pot rack, pans don't. And you may not want to hang your pans from the ceiling, wall or cabinet sides. In that case, consider a pan rack that looks like the one pictured to the right. That's what I use (except mine is white plastic coated, not chrome). You could keep it in a kitchen closet (like I do mine) or you could set it on the kitchen counter. Each pan is separated by the dividers making it convenient to access individual frying pans. (And this rack also can be turned sideways to store cookie sheets and baking sheets.) Also, because your frying pans will be separated and not nested in each other, you'll help prevent interior non-stick coatings from scraping off.