Smart Kitchen Space-Saver: Dish Drying Closet Above the Sink

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For those of us who find conventional dish-drying racks take up too much space and keep dish clutter in full view on the counter, this old Finnish invention may just do the trick. It's a dish rack that's integrated into a bottomless cabinet above the sink, so that the step of drying wet dishes is skipped completely, and are placed there to dry, out of view.

Loosely translated from Finnish, it's called a “dish drying closet.” The invention was designed by Maiju Gebhard in the 1940's to cut down on the 30,000 odd hours that a typical housewife supposedly spent during her lifetime washing, drying and putting away the dishes.

The racks in these dish drying closets are usually made of plastic-coated steel wire, allowing dishes to dry properly. When no longer wet, the racks also double as storage for clean dishes.

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Though it’s a brilliant idea, it’s not widespread: these space-savers are seen mostly in Finland in standardized measurements, and in a handful of other places like Ukraine, Sweden, Spain, Iran ,Italy, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Israel. Nevertheless, with people voluntarily downsizing their mortgages, houses and lifestyles, we may see this idea taking small spaces by storm soon.