11 Ways To Repurpose A Cooling Rack To Organize Your Home

There are plenty of different items floating around a kitchen that are designed for highly specific purposes. A masher, for example, will likely only make it out of the drawer when you're making potatoes, and an apple corer is only built to work with one kind of fruit. For many, a cooling rack falls into this category of occasional use. These wire racks are built to allow air to circulate both under and over baked goods so they will more evenly cool when they come out of the oven, but if you don't fancy yourself a baker, it's likely that your cooling rack spends more time collecting dust on a shelf than anything else.

Luckily, there are plenty of different ways to repurpose cooling racks to better organize your home — you can use them to create storage, hang coffee mugs, or even decorate. Because they're such a simple design, the possibilities are nearly endless. Whether you keep your cooling racks in the kitchen to help you make better use of the space in your fridge, or you completely transform them into fashionable wall storage, you're sure to get plenty of use out of them. As an added bonus, if you want to try out some of these hacks but you don't have a cooling rack on hand, you can pick up one of these Cooking Concepts Metal Cooling Racks for just $1.25 at Dollar Tree.

DIYs and art projects require a ton of different materials to pull off, so craft room organization hacks are essential to prevent your space from falling into disarray. If you want to free up some room in your workspace, consider taking advantage of the area available on your walls. To complete this DIY, you'll need desktop organizers, zip ties, and your cooling racks. Attach the racks to each other with the zip ties, then secure the desktop organizers to the wires before mounting. After you're done, fill the organizers up with all of your most-used supplies.

Shelving units can get incredibly expensive, but if you just need something simple to help you organize your closet or pantry, consider making your own out of cooling racks. This DIY doesn't require any heavy-duty tools or a wealth of building experience to complete. All you need to do is attach your cooling racks to one another with zip ties to create stacked box shapes. This shelving unit will, of course, be a bit flimsy, so it's best to use it to organize lightweight items like toys or snacks rather than weighty books and tools. Make sure it is secured to the wall to prevent tipping over.

Looking for an easy-to-build storage bin that will only cost a few bucks to complete? Try out this cooling rack idea. Attach your racks to each other in an open cube shape using zip ties, then use your newly-minted bin as a spot to stow items. While this bin can be used to hold just about anything, it's perfect for items that would benefit from a bit more airflow, like outdoor toys or pool equipment. Because the sides are open, you won't have to worry about water pooling in the bottom or the formation of mildew.

Making the most of a small kitchen is all about taking advantage of all of the space you have available. This, of course, includes getting clever with storage in your cabinets and drawers, but there's one area that even the most creative space savers tend to forget about: the underside of your cabinets. If you have some wiggle room between the bottom of your cabinets and the tops of your counters, consider mounting a cooling rack and using it as a convenient place to hook on and hang your mugs and other kitchen items. 

Keeping your spices accessible and organized can make your entire cooking process easier, but finding spots for all of those tiny bottles and jars can be a challenge. Thankfully, there's an easy way to DIY your own spice rack with some wire, a cooling rack, and some wall hooks. Take some pliers and bend your wire rack to create a trough shape, then secure the ends with pieces of wire. After you're done, mount it on the wall with your hooks and use it as a convenient spot to store your spices and herbs.

Storing your jewelry without having to deal with a mess of tangles and knots every time you want to wear a new item can be surprisingly difficult, but this cooling rack trick can provide a simple solution on a budget. All you need to do is mount your rack on the wall or the back of the door and hang up your necklaces, earrings, and bracelets on the wires. You can leave this rack as-is if you like the look, but you can also spruce it up with some paint or a frame around the edges.

Some of the most difficult organizational projects require you to find space for a large number of small, irregularly-shaped items. Makeup drawers are a perfect example of this. If you're not looking to invest in a massive makeup organizer and simply want to better utilize the space in your drawers, try placing a cooling rack in the bottom. The slightly elevated metal wires will create slots just large enough for you to slide in all of your compacts, lipsticks, and primers, helping to keep them visible and in their place as you go about your routine.

When you're working with such limited room, finding spots for all of your refrigerated items can feel like playing Tetris. With some creativity, however, you can actually use a cooling rack to create more storage in your fridge. If you have two bowls or plates that can't easily stack on their own, layer a cooling rack between them to create a convenient platform. You can also slide a cooling rack onto your shelf and use the small amount of room below it as storage space for thin packages that hold things like lunchmeat and sliced cheese.

It's a classic infomercial trope: the person opens up their kitchen cabinet, searching for a lid to their food storage container, and is instead met with an avalanche of plastic. While these scenes might be a bit dramatized, storage for food container lids can still make a big difference in your kitchen. If you have a cooling rack on hand, however, you can solve this problem once and for all. Place your cooling rack in your cabinet, load it up with a lid in each space, and never have to worry about a lid avalanche again.

Wall grids have become a popular way to store important notes, display pictures, and hang up essential items in the office. If you don't want to shell out the money for something so simple, however, consider repurposing a cooling rack. Conveniently, a cooling rack and wall grid are almost the exact same thing. Give it a coat of paint if you had your eye on a specific colored grid, then mount it on your wall. From there, you can attach items with clips or hooks and create your own custom organizational system in your office.

Laundry rooms are often cramped, awkward spaces, so it's essential to find a low-profile organizational system that still packs a punch. To better utilize your wall space, try hanging a cooling rack on the wall and attaching a few plastic baskets to hold small items like laundry pods and garment bags. Once you've figured out your ideal layout, you can also use the additional wires as spots to hook on bottles of cleaning products. This will keep your most-used items accessible and visible, yet still out of the way and off of your surfaces.