The $12 Organizer That Finally Got My Narrow Silverware Drawer in Order

When your silverware drawer is less than eight inches wide, it’s easy to give up hope. Here’s how it happens: You excitedly buy one utensil organizer, get it home, and realize it doesn’t fit. You measure again and go back to the store to exchange the item, only to learn that there are no ready-made organizers that are small enough to fit.

You consider buying three of the narrowest baskets (one each for forks, spoons, and knives), but there’s only room for two and that’s weird. You decide to try one of those fully customizable assembly-required kits. You get home and realize the kit is poorly made and none of the pieces fit together. You return it, give up hope, and resign yourself to a life of jumbled spoons, forks, and butter knives.

See how quickly that all went downhill? That’s how it went for me.

I am ordinarily an incredibly organized person (I edit stories about cleaning and organizing for a living, so I better be!). But you would never have been able to tell from looking at my kitchen’s silverware drawer.

There just wasn’t anything on the market that seemed to work. I briefly considered building myself a diagonal drawer organizer, but ultimately decided against it because the drawer is so narrow that the diagonals still wouldn’t have been super helpful. I also thought about straight up and down dividers, but they wouldn’t have made much of a difference.

So jumbled utensils I had. Until I saw this at a trade show a few years ago.

One of my favorite companies for kitchen gadgets, Joseph Joseph, had created the perfect solution — and it was just sitting there on display in their booth. I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it as soon as it became available. After thinking about it nonstop for weeks, it finally became available on Amazon.

At less than five inches wide, I knew it would fit in my drawer. I was worried, however, that my flatware handles would stick up too much and get in the way during opening and closing of the drawer. I’m happy to report that the handles do not get in the way! And the system is basically perfection. It somehow holds all of my butter knives, small and big forks, and small and big spoons. Eight of each! Plus a few little bonus items.

My husband complained that he couldn’t tell what pieces were where, until I pointed out that there are little icons on the right of each cubby. My only complaint (and I can’t believe I’m saying this), is that I wish it was actually a little wider, as it would give the pieces a tad more wiggle room. Of course, there is a much wider version, but it’s too wide for my drawer. I’m totally happy, though, and can’t stop opening the drawer to proudly look inside. In fact, that’s what I’m going to go do right now!

Update: I originally wrote this post in April, 2018. Five years later I’m still just as obsessed with this organizer as I was on day one. Maybe even more obsessed. This thing is working out better than I ever imagined it would. I’ve since convinced at least a half-dozen friends to get one, too. And it’s made it onto The Kitchn’s list of Kitchn Essentials.

Buy: Joseph Joseph DrawerStore, $11.98

This post originally ran on The Kitchn. See it there: The $12 Organizer That Finally Helped Me Get My Narrow Silverware Drawer in Order