A drawer packed with spatulas, tongs, peelers, and gadgets you use twice a year usually doesn't need more storage. It needs sorting. To organize a kitchen utensil drawer, empty it completely, cut the collection down to what you actually cook with, and then fit the drawer to your tools instead of the other way around. This guide walks you through sorting, grouping, and measuring, and shows how to handle long tools, odd-shaped gadgets, and overflow. For how all your kitchen drawers work together, see How to Organize Kitchen Drawers. Now, onto emptying the drawer.

Tip: Leave one compartment undivided for your longest tools. It's the single most useful thing you can do in a tool drawer.

Start by emptying the drawer and taking inventory

Take everything out and put it on a clear counter or table. This is the step people skip most, and it's why a tool drawer can get reorganized every year without getting any better. If you don't empty it, you just rearrange the same stuff.

With the drawer empty, you can see how much space you really have and how much you really own. Wipe out the inside and check for anything that's slipped to the back or fallen behind the drawer. Peelers, bag clips, and measuring spoons often turn up there.

Lay the tools out in loose piles as you go, without sorting carefully yet. Seeing four rubber spatulas side by side makes the next decision much easier than finding them one at a time.

Decide what stays, what goes, and what belongs somewhere else

Sort everything into three groups, and judge each tool by how often you actually use it, not how useful it might be someday.

• Keep anything you've used recently, plus seasonal tools you really do use when the season comes around.
• Remove extras. The right number of wooden spoons is however many you use during a normal dinner, plus maybe one. If you own several times that, you have more than you need. The same goes for bottle openers, worn-out peelers, and the free basting brush that came with something else.
• Move anything that isn't a cooking tool. Batteries, takeout menus, chargers, and rubber bands don't belong in a drawer you open with wet hands in the middle of a recipe.

Be honest about tools that still work but aren't pleasant to use: the peeler that skips, the tongs with a sticky hinge, the spatula with a melted edge. They take up as much room as the good ones and slow you down every time you grab one by mistake.

Group tools by cooking task and how often you reach for them

Once you know what you're keeping, group it by what each tool does and how often you use it. A typical set of groups looks like this:

1. Turning and stirring: spatulas, wooden spoons, tongs, ladles, slotted spoons.
2. Prep: peelers, zesters, can openers, kitchen shears.
3. Measuring and mixing: measuring spoons, small whisks, scrapers.
4. Baking: pastry brushes, bench scrapers, piping tips, cookie scoops.
5. Occasional: melon ballers, cherry pitters, jar openers, holiday-only thermometers.

How often you use a group decides where it goes. Everyday tools go where your hand reaches first. In most kitchens that's the front, but in a drawer you only open partway, put them right at the front edge. Occasional tools go behind them. If a whole group only comes out for holiday baking, consider moving it to another drawer altogether, as covered further down.

Measure the drawer before you buy or place anything

Before you buy an organizer or decide on a layout, measure:

• Inside width at the narrowest point, not across the drawer front
• Inside depth from front to back
• Anything in the way, like screws, brackets, or slide hardware
• Clearance above the drawer all the way through its opening and closing, since a countertop overhang or cabinet rail can sit lower at one point than another

How to Measure for Drawer Organizers walks you through each one.

Then measure your longest tool and your bulkiest one. Those two numbers will shape your layout more than any organizer will. Keep in mind that an expandable organizer only gets wider, not longer, and the space inside a compartment is always a little shorter than the outside of the tray. You can compare options in the KitchenEdge drawer organizers collection.

Keep an open bay for long tools

Leave one section undivided and size it to your longest tools. Tongs, whisks, ladles, long-handled spoons, and a rolling pin need a space longer than the tool itself, not a compartment sized for a fork. Most standard trays get this wrong.

Which way the bay runs depends on your drawer. In a drawer that's deeper front to back, it usually runs front to back along one side. In a wide, shallow drawer, it may run side to side across the front. If the drawer gets opened hard, front to back is steadier, because tools lying side to side will roll forward every time it shuts.

Keep the bay completely open. A divider partway along it turns one long space into two short ones, which your long tools can't use. Put the tools you reach for most in this bay, since it's also the easiest place to drop a tool back without looking.

Large utensils in a shallow or standard drawer

In a drawer without much height, lay long tools flat in the open bay in a single layer, and don't stack them.

Alternate the direction of each tool as you lay it down: head, handle, head, handle. The bulky ends, like whisk heads, ladle bowls, and tong hinges, then sit side by side instead of piling on top of each other. If everything faces the same way, the thickest parts stack up in one spot, and that's usually what stops the drawer from closing.

Check the tallest head against your clearance, not the longest handle. Handles are thin and almost never the problem. A whisk on its side or the bowl of a ladle is what catches on a countertop overhang, and it may only catch at one point as the drawer moves.

If your tongs lock, lock them before you put them away. Open tongs take up several times the space and push everything around them out of place.

Then be choosy. A shallow drawer should hold only the large tools you use most. Everything else belongs in one of the overflow spots below.

Give odd-shaped and multi-part gadgets their own space

Group awkward tools by what makes them awkward, then give each kind a space that fits, instead of forcing them into standard compartments.

• Bulky single pieces, like box graters, wide potato mashers, and garlic presses, need one wide compartment, usually toward the back. Don't lay a bulky tool across the top of a full compartment. That's the most common reason a drawer stops closing.
• Multi-part tools, like mandolines with separate blades, spiralizers, and food mills, should keep all their parts together in one space big enough that nothing's wedged in. For anything with an exposed blade, follow the maker's storage instructions. A blade guard or case does a job a drawer compartment can't.
• Nesting sets, like measuring cups, ramekins, and cookie cutters, should be nested fully. Check the stack's height against your clearance. If it's too tall, the set belongs in a cabinet.
• Powered tools, like immersion blenders and electric thermometers, should be stored the way their instructions say, including how to handle the cord and battery. If the instructions don't say, give the tool its own compartment so the cord doesn't tangle with everything else.

Plan overflow instead of forcing everything into one tray

If what you're keeping still doesn't fit, the answer is a second spot, not a tighter tray. A drawer packed to the limit is more likely to catch on the cabinet frame.

Good overflow spots include a second drawer for baking tools, a countertop crock for the few tools you use every day anyway, or a cabinet shelf for bulky specialty tools. Move whole groups, not random tools. Moving the entire baking set to another drawer keeps things easy to find. Moving three unrelated tools just means you'll have to look in two places.

A flatware drawer is not a cooking-tool drawer

Keep forks, knives, and spoons separate from cooking tools. Flatware comes in matching sets and gets grabbed by the handful, so it suits a tray of matching compartments. Cooking tools are mostly one of a kind and grabbed one at a time, so they need mixed compartment sizes and open bays. Mixing the two works badly for both: flatware slides around in compartments built for a ladle, and a ladle won't fit a compartment built for a spoon. For the flatware side, see How to Organize a Cutlery Drawer.

If your tools live in a deep drawer

A deep drawer has its own challenges. The extra height tempts you to stack, which brings up questions about clearance, the weight on the slides, and what holds an upper layer steady. How to Store Kitchen Utensils in a Deep Drawer covers those.

Test the loaded drawer, then reset it when it needs it

Fill the drawer, then open and close it slowly several times, all the way out each time. Check that nothing catches on the cabinet frame or countertop, that the drawer front closes flush, and that nothing slides into a different compartment as the drawer moves. If a tool catches, it's either too tall or in a compartment that's too short. Move it instead of pushing it down.

Reset the drawer when you notice yourself digging for things, when it stops closing smoothly, or when you find something in it that doesn't have a home. A kitchen that cooks every night will need this more often than one that mostly reheats. A reset is quick: take out anything that doesn't belong, put stray tools back in their groups, and decide again on anything you haven't touched since last time. The layout will hold up as long as each new tool gets its own spot instead of being dropped on top of the others.