How to fix cluttered kitchen countertops, in one move: put the things you touch every day on the wall, and take everything you touch less often out of the room. What stays on the worktop is the stretch you actually cook on, and you size that stretch by laying your largest chopping board and your widest pan side by side and measuring across both. One wall shelf, 11.4 to 17.5 in (29 to 44.5 cm) wide and 34.99 USD, takes the jar layer off the counter without touching anything else in the kitchen.
Why does the counter fill up again a week after you clear it?
Your counters are covered in jars and bottles and there is no cupboard space left to move them into. So the jars stay out, because out is the only place with room, and once they are out the toaster loses its corner and the board ends up on the microwave. The standard answer to this is a caddy or a set of bins, which picks the jars up and sets them back down in a box standing on the same worktop, so the surface you wanted is now under the box. At Houseland we believe the counter is a work surface and the wall is the storage, which is why the shelf we make for this job is 3.9 to 4.1 in (10 to 10.5 cm) deep and takes no worktop at all. Between the worktop and the underside of a wall cabinet there is usually 18 in (45.7 cm) of wall doing nothing. It is the emptiest surface in the room and the only one nobody fights over. Kitchens put the storage at knee height and leave the space at eye height bare, which is backwards for the handful of things you reach for daily.
What actually earns a place on the counter?
Anything your hand lands on every single day, and nothing else. If you have not touched it since yesterday, it does not live on the counter. The rule sounds severe until you run it honestly: turn every jar and bottle label to face the wall tonight, then turn one back round each time you use it. After seven days the labels still facing the wall are the items charging you rent. Count the objects on the run before you start and write the number down, because the second count is the only proof the job worked.
Daily use gets an item shortlisted, and footprint decides whether it stays. A stand mixer used every morning still eats a stretch of a short run, and on a galley worktop that is the difference between chopping and shuffling things sideways. Jars are the easy win here, because a standard 4 oz spice jar is small enough to hang and numerous enough to matter, and six to ten of them leaving the surface changes how the whole run reads. Six jars off a run is a visible change; ten is the difference between a counter that photographs and a counter that works. Knives are the thing people argue with me about, and they belong on the wall as well, which is the whole point of knife storage in a kitchen with no room for a block.
How to fix cluttered kitchen countertops: what order do you work in?
Empty the whole run first, sort second, measure third, hang last. In that order you decide once; in any other order you sort the same jars twice.
- Take everything off the run and put it on the table, every jar, every bottle and every appliance, including the ones you would swear you use.
- Measure the run end to end and write the number down, because it is the number that decides everything after this and almost nobody knows it.
- Lay your largest board and your widest pan side by side and measure across both; that width is the working stretch you keep permanently empty.
- Sort the pile into three groups: touched daily, touched weekly, touched rarely.
- Move the weekly and the rarely groups out of the kitchen, or into the bin if the date on them has passed, and note that a hall cupboard counts while a kitchen cupboard does not.
- Measure the clear wall above the run, usually about 18 in (45.7 cm) from worktop to wall cabinet, and find the widest uninterrupted stretch of it.
- Compare that stretch against 11.4, 13.8 and 17.5 in (29, 35 and 44.5 cm), then hang the shelf and load the daily jars in one row, roughly six on Small, eight on Medium, ten on Large.
- Put the working items back and leave the measured stretch empty, which is the part that decides whether any of this holds.
Step one is the step everyone skips, and skipping it is why the run fills again. You cannot judge an object that is already sitting in its place, and I have never cleared a counter without turning up a duplicate of something. There is a longer argument for the same habit in our piece on how to stop cluttered countertops, and the short version is that the wall does the work.
Which width fits the gap you actually have?
Measure the clear wall width, then take the largest of the three that fits inside it with room to get a hand past each end. The widths are fixed, and the jar count follows the width rather than the price, which is the same 34.99 USD across all three.
| Size | Width | Height | Depth | 4 oz jars in one row | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 11.4 in (29 cm) | 5.5 in (14 cm) | 3.9 in (10 cm) | About six | A narrow gap between cupboards, clear of the hob |
| Medium | 13.8 in (35 cm) | 5.9 in (15 cm) | 4.1 in (10.5 cm) | About eight | A worktop run or a pantry wall |
| Large | 17.5 in (44.5 cm) | 5.9 in (15 cm) | 4.1 in (10.5 cm) | About ten | Everyday seasonings, oils and a grinder |
Depth is the number that decides whether the shelf annoys you every day. It is 3.9 in (10 cm) on Small and 4.1 in (10.5 cm) on the other two, so it sits well inside the line of a standard 24 in (61 cm) base cabinet below and you are not meeting it with your forehead while you chop. Height is 5.5 in (14 cm) on Small and 5.9 in (15 cm) on Medium and Large, which is one tier and no more, so your tallest bottle sets the spacing. If the wall is wider than 17.5 in (44.5 cm), hang two shelves rather than hunting for one long one, leaving about 8 in (20 cm) of vertical clearance so the tall bottles still fit underneath. If it is mugs rather than jars covering your counter, hexagon shelves hold them better than a single row ever will.
Where does it hang, and what if you cannot drill?
On the empty wall between the worktop and the wall cabinets, on the two screw-in hooks if it will carry full jars, and on the two adhesive pads if you are renting and the plaster is smooth. Both fixings come in the box, so the decision is made on the day instead of in a second order.
- Work out the wall first, because on plasterboard the studs behind it usually sit 16 in (40.6 cm) apart on centre and the board itself is commonly 1/2 in (12.7 mm) thick, which is why the plug matters more than the screw.
- Hold the shelf where you want it, mark the two hook positions in pencil, then stand your tallest bottle underneath and check it still clears.
- Use the screws where the shelf will carry full glass jars or where the wall is textured, since adhesive wants a smooth and clean surface.
- On the pads, keep the load light and spread evenly across the base, and hang nothing from the front rail.
Treat it as a light-duty shelf and it behaves. It carries a row of full glass spice jars on the screw hooks, which is the job it was drawn for, and it is the wrong fixing for anything you would flinch at hearing hit the floor. Over a hob, the 4.1 in (10.5 cm) depth on Medium and Large keeps it close to the wall and out of the path of a range hood, though your hood's own clearance instructions beat anything I write here.
What would I buy for this, and who should skip it?
From the shop
Wall Mounted Spice Rack, Steel Wire Grid Shelf with Wood Base
Houseland's one-tier shelf is 3.9 to 4.1 in (10 to 10.5 cm) deep and comes 11.4, 13.8 or 17.5 in (29, 35 or 44.5 cm) wide, so the daily jars come off the stretch you just measured.
See the wall mounted spice rackHouseland lists depth on the page because depth decides this one: 3.9 in (10 cm) on Small, 4.1 in (10.5 cm) on Medium and Large, hung on wall that was already empty, so the counter you get back is the full width of the shelf.
It goes up without a drill when it has to, because two adhesive pads are in the box beside the two screw-in hooks, which is the difference between a rental fix and a conversation with a landlord.
The widths are set by jars rather than by shelf language: roughly six standard 4 oz jars in a row on the 11.4 in (29 cm) Small, eight on the 13.8 in (35 cm) Medium and ten on the 17.5 in (44.5 cm) Large, and it arrives as one finished piece with nothing to screw together.
Skip it if your clutter is appliances. One tier at 5.5 to 5.9 in (14 to 15 cm) tall will not take a toaster or a stand mixer, and it is a light-duty shelf, so cast iron is out. Skip it too if you are renting with a textured or heavily papered wall and cannot drill, because the pads want smooth plaster and a freestanding rack is the more honest answer in that room. And if you wanted wood the whole way through, this is a powder-coated steel wire frame around a solid natural wood base panel, in black or white, which is a different object from a plank of oak on two brackets. If the real problem on your worktop is the tools rather than the jars, the kitchen tools are where I would start, because a knife block and a crock of spoons take more surface than a row of spices ever will.
Shop kitchen tools from Houseland