A Kitchen Pegboard Will Help Even the Most Hopeless Home Chef Get Organized

Good enough for Julia Child, good enough for you.
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The apartment I moved into a few months ago presented several immediate problems. The molding around one door had cracked since we had visited a week before. The radiator was impossible to shut off, even though it was the middle of May. The toilet had been installed slightly diagonally, to accommodate a large pipe. But the worst problem? The cabinets.

Much to our shock, when my roommates and I opened the cabinets above and underneath our sink, we stood witness to an unbelievable mess. All of the detritus left as a result of the incomplete, shoddy work of “renovating” the apartment appeared to have just been shoved behind the doors. Bags of random trash, dust bunnies, and paper towels filled the space. It was gross.

My roommates ended up with the task of clearing this out, while I was conveniently out of town, but the memory of those cabinets filled with trash has never left me. As I considered filling the cabinets with the pots, pans, knives, kitchen utensils, mixing bowls—things that would touch the food that would go into my mouth—I started to squirm. Luckily, I already knew exactly how I was going to solve my problem: a pegboard.

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A pegboard is an alarmingly simple organizational platform: It’s literally just some sort of sturdy material with perforated holes in it. Though they're often relegated to garages or tool sheds, pegboards are an ideal kitchen-design upgrade, particularly if you’ve got space constraints. As evidence, consider that Julia Child, the absolute GOAT, had a massive one built into her home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. According to a piece she wrote for Architectural Digest in 1976, the arrangement of her copper pots and skillets onto the surface was “stunning.”

The first time I hung a pegboard, I thought it was stunning, too. It was in my previous apartment, the first real one I lived in since graduating. I got it from IKEA. After a lonely evening spent constructing it, before figuring out exactly how I would arrange my minimal gear, I stepped back to appreciate my work.

The effect a pegboard had, on me at least, wasn’t limited to aesthetics. After hanging my pegboard, I found myself cooking more. Maybe that was coincidental; this just happened to be during a period of relative life tranquility. But maybe something about actually seeing my kitchen gear triggered something in my lizard brain that made me more inclined to actually make something of those veggies I had bought from the farmer’s market, that chicken I had acquired from Trader Joe’s. Whatever it was, it worked for me. I grabbed my nonstick skillet off the wall to make an omelet more often than I ever had before.

I decided that my new apartment should have something a bit sturdier than the old one, ideally something without proprietary Swedish hooks. I considered just going to Lowe’s and having one cut to my exact specs from their wood shop. I even went to one location to see it in person, before realizing that I wasn’t quite up to the task of a completely DIY setup. After some more research, I decided to get a metal one from a company called Wall Control, along with a pack of cheap hooks.

That pegboard has offered everything I wanted. Surprising literally no one, it was easier to hang than the IKEA one, though the sharp metal backing of the Wall Control could be a slight hazard for the hasty. This board has a slightly unique design, with slots next to its holes, that makes it compatible with more sturdy hooks. But even with the basic hooks I got, it’s holding a good deal of my heaviest kitchen gear—at one point I hung a Dutch oven next to a cast-iron skillet next to a rack of pot lids—with no issue at all. If you’re so inclined, the Wall Control board comes in a variety of colors. But I’m glad I got the plain silver metal version. I can always paint it light blue, like Julia, if I want.