The Space-Saving Idea That Organizes All The Produce In Your Home On A Budget

Kitchen countertop storage is prime real estate in your home, so even necessary items have to be stowed away to keep your kitchen functional. After all, it's hard to cook when you have only a tiny amount of wiggle room to set out your ingredients and cooking utensils. So what are you supposed to do if you want to properly store produce but don't have anywhere to put it? You can solve this issue with a few hanging wire organizers that you can install on your kitchen walls for easy fruit and vegetable storage.

In @simplifiedandsavored's Instagram post below, she uses Black Metal Wall Baskets that cost $26 at Hobby Lobby. Although these wire baskets are mostly meant for files and folders in a home office, DIYers know that you can always use any item for things other than their intended use. Attach these baskets to the wall to maximize your storage and declutter your home by utilizing vertical space. Now, some of your produce will still be accessible but out of the way, and a once-dead corner of the kitchen will become actually useful. Hobby Lobby also has a Black Three Tier Wire Basket Wall Shelf for $56 that can be used for food storage, but you don't need to spend a ton of money for this idea to work. You can easily complete the same DIY kitchen storage hack with Dollar Tree items and even create storage for bananas with a shower curtain hook from Amazon; you can buy 12 for $8.

Wire baskets can be especially good for keeping certain kinds of produce fresh for longer. Many rotting fruits and vegetables produce a gas called ethylene, which can cause food spoilage at faster rates if all your produce is together with no way for the ethylene to escape. But wire baskets offer more air flow, so the ethylene is not all trapped in an enclosed space. Plus, keeping certain types of produce at room temperature, like tomatoes, potatoes, onions, bananas, and avocados (until they're ripe), is actually better for flavor and longevity. Be sure to store certain types of produce that create a lot of ethylene, like apples, melons, bananas, and avocados, away from other types of produce so as not to speed up their spoilage. At the end of the day, properly storing and organizing produce means you'll be wasting (and spending) less. And if you can save your kitchen counter space while you're all it, that's all the better.

To complete this hack, choose the wire baskets you want to use and decide where to place them in your kitchen. You could put them on an empty wall, in the pantry, or on the side of a cabinet. Hang them on sturdy nails or hooks and ensure they're stable, then fill the baskets with all your room temperature produce. And if you want to declutter even more without taking up counter space, find out how to ditch countertop produce bowls completely and use a produce food drawer instead.