Hang Your Knives Like Julia Child For A More Efficient Kitchen

Knives are some of the most important kitchen tools you have in your culinary arsenal. If you take care of your knives, they will take care of some of your essential cooking tasks like dicing, slicing, mincing, and crushing. A chef's knife can set you back anywhere from $100 to up to $1,000, sometimes more, but a good knife is a kitchen tool worth splurging on as long as you store it properly. This is why you might want to take a page from Julia Child's book. Child mounted her knives on a magnetic strip next to her sink for safe keeping and because it was efficient. 

Magnetic strips are not unique these days, but the wall placement of Julia Child's is: She hung her strip vertically, so that the knives were placed one on top of the other rather than side-by-side. This allowed the author and television personality to stack her knives horizontally, running up and down a small sliver of wall space. Whether this positioning was intentional or not, when she went to grab one, there was no contorting the hand, making for a quick and easy snatch when she was ready to use one.

Why use a magnetic strip over any other storage option for your knives? In addition to being efficient, the most important thing to consider with knife storage is safety. Keeping them in a kitchen drawer could lead to some serious cuts if little hands go into a drawer in search of a spoon or other kitchen tool. Julia Child was against storing knives loosely in a drawer because it can also cause the blades and tips to dull over time. 

However, knife blocks are not must better. While seemingly convenient, they take up precious countertop space. Not to mention, they are just a breeding ground for bacteria if you aren't vigilant about keeping your knives free of moisture and cleaning the block of wood on a regular basis.

If you like the idea of using a magnetic strip to store your kitchen knives, so they are in arm's reach when you are chopping up vegetables for ratatouille or a forge chopped salad, there are a number out there to choose from depending on what size your wall can support and how many knives you want to hang on it. You can find magnetic knife holders made of wood, like this Gourmetop wood magnetic knife holder, as well as stainless steal, like this HEREOF metal magnetic knife holder. You want to make certain that the one you select has a strong magnetic field and that's easy to install.