This $20 Lid Organizer Has Tamed the Chaos Inside My Kitchen Cabinets

At first glance, the YouCopia StoraLid organizer appears to be nothing more than a basic plastic tray. It’s in the details where this little lifesaver earns its precious piece of real estate in my small kitchen.

The small, medium, and large Storalid organizers each come with five tabbed dividers that readily snap into place along the slotted sides. (You can also buy an extra-large, expandable StoraLid with eight dividers if you routinely store awe-inducing amounts of food.)

Lids are placed into the organizer standing on end rather than stacked flat on top of each other, which allows you to see and reach more lids at once. You can sort your container tops into whatever customized subdivisions you choose, then reposition dividers as needed to continually reconfigure your system so that it always works best for you.

My desire to achieve maximum levels of organizational perfection, though, is moderate at best. I make half-hearted attempts at keeping like lids with like, and usually I take a minute or two every weekend to give my StoraLid organizer a once-over.

What I appreciate much more about the dividers is how they help compress my container lids snugly against one another—even when different-size lids are randomly grouped together between dividers—eliminating the risk of loose-lid spillage.

If you don’t have enough lids to create that compression, though, don’t worry. The bottom of the StoraLid organizer features a trough-like center channel that corrals lids to prevent them from jostling around. This feature is specifically designed to keep round lids in place, but I’ve found that it can help square and rectangular lids stay put as well.

I recently tested a small StoraLid organizer and fit 37 lids into it. My large StoraLid organizer, which I’ve been using for about six years, easily accommodates a whopping 60-ish lids at a time. (Because the StoraLid organizer’s dividers are bendable, with a lot of give to them, I would say exact lid tallies are, shall we say, flexible.)

The large and medium StoraLid organizers can hold round and square lids measuring up to 9 inches across, according to YouCopia, while the small version can hold lids up to 7 inches across. The lid of a typical deli takeout container has a diameter of 4.5 inches; the large StoraLid organizer, at 10.4 inches across, is wide enough that I can keep most of my lids in it two by two, and because its sides are only 3 or so inches high, I can eyeball practically all of my lids in one glance.

On those occasions when I can’t quickly find the lid I’m looking for, the StoraLid organizer’s built-in handles and lightweight design (the large version weighs a pound) make it easy to pull it off the shelf with one hand and keep it balanced on its short trip to the counter. (Don’t worry if you drop yours, though; to test its durability, I recently dropped it onto my kitchen floor 20 times in a row. It sustained nary a nick or scratch, and the dividers even stayed locked in place 80% of the time.)

In short, grabbing only the lid I want without disrupting all of my other lids—a seemingly minor chore that I used to majorly loathe—has become a breeze rather than something I brace myself for.

I shouldn’t have been surprised that the StoraLid organizer works so well. For years, the Wirecutter kitchen team has recommended one of its sister items, the YouCopia StoreMore Adjustable Bakeware Rack, to hold cutting boards. “The rack is heavy enough that it won’t tip over while holding large items like a wood cutting board or pizza stone,” said senior staff writer Michael Sullivan in our guide to cheap kitchen essentials, “and the vinyl feet on the bottom prevent it from sliding around.”

Before I got my StoraLid organizer, I would shove my container tops helter-skelter into an inexpensive under-shelf basket from Home Depot. It did a decent job holding lids in place—until I needed to actually retrieve one. Because under-shelf baskets are open at the front, there was always a high likelihood that several other lids would slide out along with the one I wanted. (I usually felt compelled to then run these fallen lids through the dishwasher before cramming them back into their makeshift home, which was an irritating waste of resources.)

I’ve tried hacking other items to hold lids, like a wooden-pegged plate rack or drying rack, but nothing has cut down on lids-everywhere aggravation like my StoraLid organizer has. If my kitchen boasted a drawer deep enough to house my whole lid collection, I’d probably try dumping everything into it and calling it a day, but I think I’d soon miss how the StoraLid cuts down on my daily dose of visual clutter while letting me quickly scan for the lid I need without any digging.

Now if I could just make some headway on my sock drawer.

This article was edited by Annemarie Conte and Marguerite Preston.