Create A Large Wall Hung Storage Rack Using Dollar Tree Essentials

If you're a home gourmand looking for better ways to store spices, K-Cups, paper towels, hot pads, and more, your best bet may be just to MacGyver it. However, creating the unicorn kitchen storage rack of your dreams might be a different story. For a little help with that endeavor, you'll want to take a hint from TikTokker @heather_weir. She went to the Dollar Tree and gathered a handful of — arguably — completely unrelated kitchen items. She hacked some zip ties to turn these items into a wall rack that is big and sturdy enough to hold up to 144 K-Cups without breaking a sweat and without breaking apart.

If you're going to try this project at home, your supplies list starts with four 16-inch by 10-inch metal cooling racks, the kind you cool your bacon chocolate chip cookies on post-baking. It also requires 18 wire napkin holders. These will be combined to create a single 32-inch by 20-inch wall rack that includes 18 "cubbies" for small items like K-Cups and spice jars. A handful of zip ties holds all of these disparate elements together. Mounting the rack on the wall is a relatively simple affair. You'll need either a few regular screws or some screw hooks and a drill as well as a pair of scissors. The latter items allow you to trim down the tails of the zip ties once they're secured on the unit.

Binding the storage rack together is your first order of business. You'll line the baking racks up two-by-two, with one set of two racks on the bottom and one set on the top. All four of the baking racks need to be tied together with the zip ties.

When you're assembling the metal racks together, it's important that you place all of the baking racks in the same direction. More specifically, baking racks have little "feet" on them that keep them elevated slightly above the counter. These are located in the top and bottom quadrants of the rack. All of the feet need to be facing the same direction. Otherwise, the rack won't hang correctly. After you treat the metal racks, you'll affix the napkin holders to the non-feet side of the racks using zip ties. This ensures that the rack hangs slightly away from the wall. The design of the rack should be three napkin holders across and six tall, or nine on the upper half and nine on the lower half.

It'll be hung up on the wall either with a series of screws or screw-eye hooks. You should choose the one that works best with your kitchen's building materials. Once it's hung up, it'll hold containers that are about 2 inches or less in diameter. This is the size of most standard K-Cups (or non-brand equivalents). It's also the size of most standard spice jars.

This DIY is that it's so flexible that you can change the three-by-six napkin holder setup to suit your needs. You're not limited to putting napkin holders on the rack. You can replace some of them with other kitchen tools and gadgets to make the wall rack better geared toward your cooking habits.

For example, some of the most common items that a home chef uses, besides herbs and spices, are items like graters, vegetable peelers, big spoons, spatulas, hot pads, and paper towels. To accommodate these items, you'll redesign the storage rack a bit. On the left-hand side, you'll leave the design as is — that is, you'll attach six napkin holders. On the right-hand side on the bottom, you'll attach a metal Dollar Tree paper towel rack. Use zip ties to fasten the base of the towel rack to the cooling rack. The bar of the towel holder will jut out perpendicular to the cooling rack, making it easy for you to slide rolls of towels on and off the storage rack as needed.

Above the towel rack, hook some S-hooks to the cooling racks. Dollar Tree sells S-hooks that feature cute little animals on them. From the S-hooks, you can hang anything that has a hole in the handle or that is fastened together with a metal or plastic O-shaped ring. For example, you can organize cooking utensils on the wall rack. Attach more hooks as needed.