The Genius Tension Rod Hack Your Kitchen Has Been Missing For Far Too Long
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Of all the ways you could think about hacking a tension rod, organizing your kitchen probably wasn't high on your list. Sure, you know that these cheap hangers of clothes work wonders when it comes time to hang up a shower curtain. But the kitchen? Yes, sir! As it turns out, putting up tension rods in not-so-random places counts among the best ways to spiffy up your kitchen. If your cupboards cough up items like cookie sheets and pot lids when you open them and your drawers sport a jumbled array of mismatched sets of silver and errant spatulas, small tension rods like these Ginsou cupboard bars are the answer to cleaning up the clutter.
For the cupboards, it's usually a matter of inserting a few rods inside the space vertically. Once they're in place, the rods hold items upright — it's a great way to organize pot lids, baking sheets, and other items in between the rods. The vertical position of these items, thanks to support from the tension rods, allows you to slide pieces in and out of the cupboards easily.
The trick works in your kitchen drawers, too. Tension rods placed horizontally inside the drawer keep silverware and small items sorted into sections. They'll also keep like items, such as spice bottles or single-serve potato chip bags, in the same section of the drawer. And if you use smaller wooden boxes from the Dollar Tree to hold things like wire twist ties from breads, packets of restaurant condiments, or straws, you can position a tension rod up against the side of the small boxes to keep them from sliding around in the drawer when it's opened.
Hanging cleaning supplies, hot pads, and other items
A tension rod positioned in the cupboard under the sink is the perfect spot to hang your bottles of cleaning fluids. Most of those cleaning items have a gun nozzle, which turns into a hanger that allows you to hook the bottle onto the rod. You'll reduce clutter in the cupboards by giving those items a spot to hang out. Once the floor is clear of them, you have more room for items like boxes of garbage bags or cleaning towels.
In the upper cupboards near the stove, tension rods paired with Navona 3.5-inch stainless steel S-hooks create a home for hot pads and cooking utensils with a hole in the handle. This arrangement allows you to put them within easy reach when you're cooking. Burnt fingers or overcooked noodles become distant memories because when you need protection from the hot oven, your favorite oven mitt hangs nearby on the tension rod. Same goes for the noodle strainer with a handle.
Finally, if you want to upgrade your coffee mug storage, the tension rod and S-hook setup is ideal. It keeps the mugs organized and unchipped in the cupboards above your coffeemaker. All you need to do is hang the tension rod between the walls of the cupboard's interior, and hook the S-hooks onto the bar. After that, it's just a matter of hanging the mugs onto the S-hooks. And if you really want to keep this tidy looking, take it one step further, and color code each rod to keep your mugs sorted by color or style.