This is the width where the question changes. In a drawer listed at 13½, 16½ or 22½ inches, every organizer on this site fits — all eight of them, in all three drawers, with room to spare. Width stops being the thing that rules anything out.
What replaces it is a layout problem: what goes in beside what, and what the strip left over is good for. The answer to the second half is usually nothing, and that is worth knowing before you order.
Figures are quoted from the pages that publish them. Nothing here was tested by hand, and no price, rating or stock figure appears.
For once, the drawer is published too
The other pages in this series have to say that no drawer of that width appears in this site’s sources. Here it does. IKEA publishes its MAXIMERA medium drawers for 15, 18 and 24-inch cabinets, and the three of them are what this page compares against:
- 15-inch cabinet: Width 13 1/2"; Depth 21 3/8"; Height 5 5/8".
- 18-inch cabinet: Width 16 1/2"; Frame, width 18"; Depth 21 3/8"; Height 5 5/8".
- 24-inch cabinet: Width 22 1/2"; Frame, width 24"; Depth 21 3/8"; Height 5 5/8".
Two things follow from those lines. The cabinet number is not the drawer number — an 18-inch cabinet gives a drawer listed at 16½ — which is the subject of its own guide. And the depth and height are the same across all three: 21⅜ deep and 5⅝ tall whichever cabinet it came out of.
That second point does more work than it looks. If your drawer is one of these, depth and height are already settled for every organizer listed here, and width is the only variable left.
Depth and height are settled, and here is the arithmetic
The deepest organizer on this site is the SpaceAid spice tray at 17 inches front to back. Against a listed depth of 21⅜ that leaves 4⅜ inches of drawer behind it. Everything else here is between 15 and 15¾ inches deep, so it leaves more.
Height is the same story. The largest stated minimum among these records is the Stone Compact Tiered’s 9 cm, which its page also prints as 3.5 inches. A drawer listed at 5⅝ clears that by 2⅛ inches. The other stated minimums — 3¼ inches, 3.3 inches, 3 inches — clear it by more.
So in one of these drawers, nothing on this site is ruled out by depth or by height. That is unusual, and it is why the rest of this page is about width alone.
The strip left over is usually dead space
Here is the number that decides your layout, and it is not on any product page: the narrowest organizer listed on this site is 5 inches wide. A gap narrower than that cannot be filled from here at all.
Run that against the floor trays and the three drawers and most combinations end the same way. Widths are as the makers print them: 5 inches for the Bamboo Compact and for the Compact Tiered in Stone, 7 for the Bamboo Large.
- 13½ inch drawer — 5 + 7 = 12, leaving 1½. Two 5s = 10, leaving 3½. Both strips are dead.
- 16½ inch drawer — three 5s = 15, leaving 1½. 7 + 7 = 14, leaving 2½. 5 + 7 = 12, leaving 4½. All dead. Two 5s = 10, leaving 6½, which is the first arrangement on this page with room for a third piece.
- 22½ inch drawer — 5 + 5 + 5 + 7 = 22 leaves ½; three 7s = 21 leaves 1½; four 5s = 20 leaves 2½; 5 + 7 + 7 = 19 leaves 3½. All dead. 5 + 5 + 7 = 17 leaves 5½ and three 5s = 15 leaves 7½, both of which take another organizer.
Three arrangements out of all of those leave a gap you can still use. That is the practical content of this page: decide whether you want the drawer filled or the leftover usable, because with these widths you rarely get both.
None of which makes a dead strip useless to you. A 2-inch gap holds a bottle opener, a folded cloth, the thermometer that never has a home. It is dead only in the sense that nothing on this site is made to go there, and it is more honest to say so than to imply the catalog covers every gap it creates.
See the DrawerStore Bamboo Compact on the size check
The two expanding trays are a different calculation
Two records here have a width range rather than a width, and in these drawers the range is mostly something you do not get to use.
Joseph Joseph’s Expandable Cutlery Tray is listed at H2 × W11½ × D15 in compact and H2 × W19 × D15 in expanded. In the 13½ drawer it goes in at 11½ and can open only to 13½. In the 16½ drawer it opens to 16½. Only in the 22½ drawer can it reach its full 19 inches, and then it leaves 3½ inches — dead, by the rule above.
The SpaceAid spice organizer is listed at 17"L x (12-23")W x 1.4"H. Its range covers all three drawers: set it to 13½, 16½ or 22½ and it fills the width exactly, leaving nothing at either side. That is a perfectly good answer when the drawer is for one purpose.
The habit worth keeping with either of them: write down the width you will actually set, not the range. The range is what the tray can reach; the width you stop at is what a second organizer beside it has to share the drawer with. And a tray that expands to fill the drawer has no second organizer beside it, which is a choice rather than a fault.
Where the plan fails, in order
The cabinet size is used as the drawer size. A 24-inch cabinet gives a drawer listed at 22½, and planning three 7-inch trays across 24 inches instead of 22½ is how you end up 1½ inches short.
The leftover is assumed to be fillable. It usually is not, and the gap is created by the arrangement you chose rather than by the drawer.
An expander is bought for its maximum. In two of these three drawers the maximum is unreachable, and you are paying for travel the drawer will not allow.
Trays are bought one at a time. Buy the first, measure what is left, and only then decide whether the remaining strip takes anything — that order costs nothing and it is the one this page would follow.
What to write on the sticky note
Width between the walls. Then, after each organizer you add, the width remaining. Stop when the remainder drops below 5 inches, because at that point nothing listed here will fill it and the decision is about what you already own.
Depth and height you can take once and forget, if your drawer is one of these three. The drawer size check compares every listed model against your numbers, and the comparison by listed width has the per-model detail for the narrow end of the catalog.
Sources
- IKEA, MAXIMERA drawer, medium, white, 15x24" (art. 002.656.70): "Width13 1/2 "; Depth21 3/8 "; Height5 5/8 "". ikea.com (accessed 2026-09-17; evidence B-EV-41)
- IKEA, MAXIMERA drawer, medium, white, 18x24" (art. 002.656.65): "Width16 1/2 "; Frame, width18 "; Depth21 3/8 "; Height5 5/8 "". ikea.com (accessed 2026-09-09; evidence B-EV-26)
- IKEA, MAXIMERA drawer, medium, white, 24x24" (art. 802.656.66): "Width22 1/2 "; Frame, width24 "; Depth21 3/8 "; Height5 5/8 "". ikea.com (accessed 2026-09-17; evidence B-EV-42)
- Joseph Joseph US, DrawerStore Bamboo Compact (SKU 85168) "H6 x W12.2 x D39.8cm (H2½ x W5 x D15¾ inches)", Compact Tiered Stone (SKU 8500001) "H6 x W12.6 x D39.7 cm (H2.4 x W5 x D15.6 inches)" with "minimum height of 9 cm (3.5 inches)", Bamboo Large (SKU 851697) "H6 x W17.5 x D38.4 cm (H2½ x W7 x D15 inches)", and the Gray Expandable Cutlery Tray (SKU 85042) "Compact: H5.3 x W29 x D38cm (H2 x W11½ x D15 inches); Expanded: H5.3 x W48 x D38cm (H2 x W19 x D15 inches)". us.josephjoseph.com (accessed 2026-09-08; evidence B-EV-18, B-EV-20, B-EV-19, B-EV-21, B-EV-24)
- Joseph Joseph US, the stated minimum drawer heights named above: Bamboo Compact "Suitable for drawers with a minimum height of 8cm (3¼ inches)", Bamboo Large "Suitable for drawers with a minimum height of 8.5 cm (3.3 inches)", Compact Tiered Stone "Suitable for drawers with a minimum height of 9 cm (3.5 inches)". us.josephjoseph.com (accessed 2026-09-08; evidence B-EV-22, B-EV-23, B-EV-24)
- SpaceAid, the 3-inch minimum named above: "please ensure that your drawer is at least 3" high to accommodate the spice rack." spaceaidhome.com (accessed 2026-09-10; evidence B-EV-37)
- SpaceAid, Bamboo 4 Tier Drawer Spice Organizer: "The adjustable bamboo drawer spice organizer measures 17"L x (12-23")W x 1.4"H". spaceaidhome.com (accessed 2026-09-10; evidence B-EV-31)
- Inch & Drawer, organizers for a drawer about 5 inches wide, 7 to 9 inches wide, and the 18-inch drawer guide (own site).