The Vintage Thrift Find That Keeps Utensils And Pans From Crowding Your Cabinets

Storing pans in an average-sized kitchen is always problematic, with protruding handles and different sizes that make cabinet storage awkward and usually leave unused space. And keeping large utensils in drawers or countertop containers gets messy and unsightly. Enter the old-fashioned meat hook. This rustic thrift store gem can solve the clutter in your kitchen by holding pans and utensils so you can keep your counters clear and save cabinet space. You can visit local vintage shops along with online stores and marketplaces (like Etsy) to build up a collection of hooks for your kitchen.

Once you've compiled several hooks, one do-it-yourself hack to free up counter space in your kitchen is building a peg rail to hang oven mitts, large utensils, small pans, and more. Meat hooks can offer a variation of this hack. You may find a meat rack with multiple hooks ready to attach to your kitchen wall, or you can build one with a strip of wood and meat hooks that already have eyes built in at the top that you can screw them onto the wood rail. Larger hooks can be used on their own to hang from the ceiling, or you can take the extra step to build a full pot rack complete with hanging hooks for your pans.

This job requires more materials than a peg rail but will bring all your pots and pans out of the cabinets and into a more accessible location of your kitchen. You'll need some wood planks cut to the size necessary to make the frame and a grid rack to secure to the bottom. This is where you will eventually stack your pots. Once you put the pot rack together, it's time to add the meat hooks for your pans. Use double-sided hooks here — the kind where one end is for the piece of meat and the other is to hook onto a support beam. This way you can hook them right onto the grid rack with no additional tools needed. Use heavy-duty screw hooks to hook the rack onto a chain and to hang from the ceiling.

With utensils, pots, and pans out of the way, you can next go thrifting for cubbies to maximize your newfound cabinet space or perhaps a countertop cabinet to store fresh bread or spices you wish to keep handy without adding counter clutter. Part of the fun of thrifting is finding new uses for the things you buy, and a meat hook doesn't have to be only for butchers. Now you know how to use them to reduce your kitchen clutter and upgrade your kitchen at the same time.