Bag Drying Racks

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.