I organized my spices today. Recently, I kept thinking that I needed ginger. I bought ginger only to find a brand new bottle with my spices. Plus, I always have to dig through a basket of spices and never know if I’ll find what I need.
Previously, I had them in a drawer and on two shelves. Now, I have them in a drawer and on one shelf. Here are some pictures. You can see in the first one how hard it is to find anything. You have to lift up every spice to see what it is.
First, I put all of my spices in alphabetical order. I put half full bottles together. I chose larger spice bottles whenever possible. The white ones in the picture above are too narrow to fit my teaspoon inside. It’s quite annoying. Every time I buy spices now, I try to get the biggest, cheapest container. That way, my measuring spoons will fit inside and I’ll have enough to contribute properly to my food storage. Some of my spices had hardened into lumps, so I threw those out. I washed and dried the white-lidded jars so that I could reuse them.
I had some spices in baggies and others in very short containers. I put those in the empty white-lidded jars. I also used my label maker to label the tops. See below.
Next, I put all of the non white-lidded jars in a tupperware container. That’s when I noticed that I had no idea what each spice was unless I picked it up. So, I labeled the top of each spice jar with a marker. If the lid was too dark, I used my label maker.
Now, my spices are much more organized. If I don’t see the spice I need in the drawer, I’ll pull down the tupperware container off the shelf and check the lids to find my spice. Hooray!
So, I organized my spices by shopping at home first. I didn’t go out and buy a fancy, new spice organizational system (although I’ve looked – they’re too expensive to get the larger-mouthed containers that I want in the quantity that I need, even if I bought them wholesale online). My spices are much more organized (even if they don’t look that glamorous) and it didn’t cost a cent!
Great idea for organizing your spices.
You commented on my blog about my garden and planting now. I would wait till all chances of a freeze are gone, probably around april you can plant your summer veggies.
We had a few frosts but nothing major and it didn’t seem to damage any of our plants, suprisingly. Good luck with your garden.
AWESOME! I love the comment you made about shopping at home FIRST. This looks fantastic. Then again, I love to organize and I was nodding along with each step you took. GREAT job.
Found you via your comment on Sherry’s blog, Frugal Domestic Goddess. Glad I popped by here – you’ve got a really neat blog. I’ll be back!
Great job – I’m really impressed with how easily (and cheaply) you made a system for YOU that works. My Dad invented a spice storage solution for my Mom called the SpiceStack. It comes empty so you can store spice bottles from the grocery store (no transferring to different bottles or labeling required). It may not fit the bulk spices that you love so much, however, it does make it really easy to check your spices quickly and find what you need in a snap while cooking. You can check it out at http://www.SpiceStack.com. Happy Organizing!
Lauren Greenwood, President, SpiceStack Inc.
Hello! I popped over from Phoebe’s site. I love what you did with your spices! Makes it so much easier, doesn’t it. I really need to do mine again….they are a mess!
Commenting normally isn’t my thing, but i have spent an hour on the website, so thanks for the great info Greetings.