Joseph Joseph Nest Lock Plastic BPA Free Food Storage Container Set with Lockable Airtight Leakproof Lids, 10-Piece, Multi-Color

Why it's worth it

A color-coded ten-piece set where every container nests inside the next and the lids snap together into a single block. If your cabinet is the constraint, this solves it more completely than any stacking design.

Open most plastic-storage cabinets and something falls out. That's the problem this set was built for. Tapered walls let all five containers nest down into roughly the footprint of the largest one, and the lids clip into their own tidy stack. Owners describe going from an avalanche every time they opened the door to a single block they can lift out with one hand.

Small kitchens get the most out of this, and they get a lot. Studio apartments, RVs, boat galleys, dorm kitchens — anywhere the cabinet is the binding constraint rather than the budget. One owner keeps two sets in a sailboat icebox where everything gets tossed around, and reports the lids stay locked through it all. That's a harsher test than most home kitchens will ever apply.

From our review of 5 kitchen storage containers, by David Sinclair, Managing Editor

What we like

• +Open most plastic-storage cabinets and something falls out
• +Small kitchens get the most out of this, and they get a lot
• +The quarter-turn locking lids are quick
• +Color coding sounds gimmicky and turns out to be practical

What to know

• –Nesting is all-or-nothing
• –Individual capacities run smaller than non-nesting sets, since the taper costs volume
• –It's plastic, so no oven, and some owners report the finish looking slightly altered after dishwasher cycles even on the top rack