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See why.Bag Drying Racks
These racks help you dry plastic and reusable bags, but which design works best?
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What You Need To Know
It’s thrifty and eco-friendly to wash and reuse plastic food-storage bags. At upwards of $0.14 cents apiece, plastic zipper-lock bags are pricey, and while they’re recyclable, they don’t biodegrade in landfills. Even if you use reusable storage and produce bags, you’ll need to wash and dry them. But once you’ve washed the bags, how can you dry them without draping them all over your dish rack and countertops?
Enter bag drying racks, which come in a variety of designs and materials. We chose five that were made of wood, metal, or plastic, priced from about $9.50 to about $24.00, and put them to the test. We washed a variety of plastic bags, including our favorite gallon-size food-storage bags, quart-size sandwich bags, and snack-size bags, plus our winning reusable silicone storage bag and reusable produce bags. We also tried drying an inverted water bottle and a travel mug on them. We rated the racks on their performance, ease of use, and durability.
How to Wash and Reuse Plastic Bags
Before we got to the tests, we learned a few essentials for washing and drying dozens of bags. First, forget about turning plastic and silicone bags inside out before washing them—it’s not only unnecessary, but it also damages their seams and seals. Just add warm, soapy water to the bag; seal it and slosh the water around to clean its inside; rinse it; and give the bag a good shake to remove any excess water before hanging it on a rack to dry. (You can pat the inside with a clean dish towel to speed up drying.) Before reusing a bag, be sure that it is completely dry. And don’t wash or reuse any plastic bags that contained raw meat or spoiled food; discard those for food safety.
Best Designs for Faster Drying
Plastic storage bags dry faster if they’re propped open and held aloft so that air can circulate inside, and that is what the drying racks in our lineup were all supposedly designed to do. But the designs of the racks varied widely, and their differences affected our results. The arms of the drying racks we tested ranged in length from 5¼ to 10½ inches. The two models with arms longer than 10 inches were the most successful at keeping the bottoms of the large gallon-size bags from crumpling on the countertop or against the drying rack’s base, which would trap moisture and limit airflow.
We also preferred models with lots of arms, which gave us the most drying options and the biggest capacity. The racks in our lineup had from two to eight arms apiece, and those with the most arms allowed us to spread fewer bags open across several arms to prop them open wider instead of loading only one bag or bottle per arm. The best models ...
Everything We Tested
Recommended
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
With eight long arms and a stable base, this tall wooden rack has the biggest capacity in our lineup and did the best job drying multiple types of items at once. As a drying rack, it was the best overall, though it does not also function as a holder for filling bags. It stayed steady even when we placed an inverted water bottle and an inverted travel mug onto the rack to dry (though it teetered when a heavy item wasn’t balanced by other items). We appreciated that this eco-friendly rack is made of repurposed wood scraps from furniture making.
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 3 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2.5 stars out of 3.
This sturdy, handsome steel rack was the heaviest and most stable model in our lineup, and it folded the flattest for storage. It was one of three models we tested with a dual function: It held open quart- and gallon-size bags as we filled them, making it doubly useful in the kitchen. While we had to exercise caution when filling the gallon-size bag with liquid, it held a quart-size bag firmly open, even when we poured liquid into it quickly. We docked a few performance points because this rack had just four arms, which limited the number of bags or other items we could dry at a time. But if you don’t need more capacity, it’s the best and most versatile choice.
Recommended with reservations
- Durability: 3 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 2 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 2 stars out of 3.
We appreciated the microfiber drip-catching cloth that came with this small, accordion-style rack and that the rack had seven arms for holding multiple items. Too bad those arms measure only a little over 5 inches tall, so larger bags drooped, limiting air circulation, and didn’t dry. If you have only small bags and mugs to dry, this fairly nice-looking drying stand is not a bad choice.
Not Recommended
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1.5 stars out of 3.
While this model is billed both as a “baggy opener” to hold bags open for filling and as a drying rack, it wasn’t very effective at either function. Its arms expand to 10 inches long, but the high, rounded base gets in the way and crumples the bottoms of larger bags, limiting the flow of air. When we tried filling quart- and gallon-size plastic bags with liquid, the clips dropped the bags, and sometimes the arms collapsed, too, dumping the contents. As a drying rack it tipped over easily, even with the suction-cup base, because the cup attached itself only to wet steel or wet laminated surfaces. With just two arms per rack, its capacity is limited.
- Durability: 2 stars out of 3.
- Ease of Use: 1.5 stars out of 3.
- Performance: 1 stars out of 3.
Lacking the suction-cup base, this model shared the same design flaws and limited capacity of its sibling and instantly tipped over when we placed an inverted water bottle on one arm; its clips dropped the quart- and gallon-size bags we were trying to fill, spilling their contents. The lightest model in the lineup, it felt flimsy, and we worried about its durability.
Reviews you can trust
Reviews you can trust
The mission of America’s Test Kitchen Reviews is to find the best equipment and ingredients for the home cook through rigorous, hands-on testing. We stand behind our winners so much that we even put our seal of approval on them.
Lisa McManus
Lisa is an executive editor for ATK Reviews, cohost of Gear Heads on YouTube, and gadget expert on TV's America's Test Kitchen.