If You Have An Impossibly Small Kitchen, This Genius Dish Rack's For You

If you have a tiny kitchen, your counter space is precious. And chances are, your cramped cookspace doesn't come with a dishwasher, which means you're forced into devoting a rather large percentage of your available surfaces to a dish rack — kind of a bummer.

I know the struggle — while I currently have a pretty decent sized kitchen, I have lived in a 200-square-foot studio, so I'm always conscious of small-space design. When I saw this Yamazaki Home double decker dish rack on Food52 ($70), it made me wish something like it had existed in my studio-dwelling days. Curious, I decided to test it out.

Food52

There are a lot of things I love about this dish rack as a small-space solution. A movable container for silverware sits on the outer edge, not eating into your dish space; movable hooks also allow you to hang utensils to further free up any nooks. The top rack doesn't fit a ton, but for the person who's generally only washing a few plates at a time, it's just enough space. A plastic tray can be positioned on an upper and lower setting to accommodate bulkier items, but the most interesting feature is the tray's spout, which conveniently funnels runoff water back into your sink. Again, this feature speaks to the practicality of this as a small space-only item — you need to position your dish rack very close to the edge of your sink if you want to utilize the spout.

So, urban dwellers with teeny kitchens: This is a great, minimalist storage solution. If you've got a big family and the counter space to spare, however, you might find Yamazaki Home's double decker dish rack quite limiting.