Not every small-kitchen fix needs a plug or a shelf of its own. Here are three bits of kit, all well under £20, that fold, roll or shrink down small enough to live in a drawer.
A trivet that opens like a fan
A trivet only earns its keep for the five minutes a hot pan rests on the worktop, so a rigid one is a strange thing to give a permanent home to. The Joseph Joseph Stretch trivet folds flat instead. It’s a silicone and nylon composite that Joseph Joseph rate as heat resistant up to 240°C, and it opens out in pleats to about 25cm across, long enough for a roasting tin as well as a single pan.
Closed, it’s just 2cm thick, so it slides down the side of a drawer rather than claiming a shelf. Joseph Joseph back it with a two year guarantee too.
Good to know
It’s hand wash only, not dishwasher safe. And because it’s silicone rather than wood or cork, it’s a protector for hot pans, not a chopping surface. We haven’t used this one ourselves, so the details above come from Joseph Joseph’s own product page and the current listing.
A garlic peeler the size of a lipstick
Garlic is lovely in almost everything and awful to peel, especially with no room to lay out six cloves and a knife. The Joseph Joseph Duo garlic peeler is a short silicone tube, 10cm long, that you drop a clove into and roll against the worktop a few times. The skin comes away on its own, no knife and no smell left on your fingers.
At that size it barely counts as kit. It lives in the drawer with your teaspoons and takes up about as much room as one.
Good to know
It’s built for cloves one at a time, not a whole bulb in one go. Joseph Joseph list it as dishwasher safe but not microwave safe, which is easy to forget with a gadget this small.
A steamer basket that folds down to almost nothing
A steamer basket is a good way to cook vegetables without drowning them, but most are an odd shape to store: too wide to stand on their side, too shallow to stack with anything. The KitchenCraft collapsible steaming basket is stainless steel and opens out to 28cm, fitting over most saucepans, then folds flat once it’s rinsed off.
Small stainless steel feet hold it clear of the bottom of the pan, so whatever’s in it steams rather than boils. Folded, it’s thinner than a dinner plate, and stands upright in the same cupboard as your baking trays.
Good to know
There’s no handle, so lifting it out of hot water means reaching in with tongs rather than picking it straight up. It’s dishwasher safe according to the listing, though stainless steel baskets like this can pick up a little tarnish over time, which is cosmetic rather than a fault.
None of these three will transform your kitchen. What they’ll do is quietly sort out three small annoyances (hot pans with nowhere to go, garlic nobody wants to peel, a steamer basket that eats a whole shelf) for not much money and barely any space.
A quick note on the pictures in this post: they’re illustrations of what each type of product generally looks like, not photos of the exact items, so whatever turns up at your door will look a little different in the details.
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