With two girls under 5 year old, we've got quite a collection of kiddie plates. You need to if you don't want to hand-wash between every meal, and darn it if they don't keep getting cuter and cuter, so I keep buying more (I recently fell for the Cheeky plates at Target).

But the problem is that, unless you stick to just one brand and have a whole matching set, each plate is shaped just a little bit differently, and often they have dividers to help you feed your kid vegetables (look, the broccoli isn't touching the chicken!), which means they won't nest into each other. So when you try to stack them, it's a wobbly mess that topples over every time you try to take out one or two.

Fortunately, a mom out there came up with a solution: Store them in a dish rack instead! Gah — it's literally something that has probably been staring you in the face this whole time!

Blogger Aria Kilpatrick of Remodelicious has two toddlers and wanted to empower them to get out (and put away) their own dishes — but also to find a way to keep the dishes organized. After experimenting with a file folder holder, she bought a dish rack on a whim and it turned out to be a perfect solution. While most of us only think about using a dish rack on the countertop to help hold dishes as they dry, it turns out it's a great solution for organizing kids' dining pieces.

The beauty of the dish rack is that is gets those pesky divided plates vertical, instead of horizontal, so you don't have to stack them and tempt fate. Dish racks also have containers for those kiddie forks, sporks, and spoons that can jam up your grown-up utensil drawer. And any space that's not taken up by the plates can hold cups and bowls. Put the whole thing in a cabinet or a deep drawer and prepare to be amazed — even your toddler will have a hard time ruining this setup.

How do you store all your kids' dinnerware?