Organize Your Spices

Spices are one of the biggest headaches to get organized. If you cook a variety of foods, you are bound to have dozens of spices in your kitchen. They often don't fit in the small little one-shelf spice racks, and cabinet storage means shuffling through dozens of little bottles to find what your looking for or ending up with 3 bottles of cinnamon because you could never find the ones you had when you looked.

Spice organization may seem daunting, but is actually fairly simple once you have a direction. Here are several great ideas to help you organize your spices.

The simplest, and most straight forward, way to organize spices is to get a spice rack large enough to hold all your spice jars. These can often hang on a wall or outside a cabinet and come in all different sizes and qualities. If you have a full array of spices, you will want to look for the 3-5 tier racks, or larger. If you can't find one rack to fit all your bottles, you can always buy two. If you are crafty, you can even make your own.

The picture on the right is the JK Adams 48 bottle spice rack from the Tubular Spice Company. Both spacious and compact this is an awesome rack for those of us with lots of spices and limited space. To see this rack or others from the Tubular Spice Company, just click the picture!

People far craftier than I also make their own awesome spice racks out of new material or old. If you like do-it-yourself projects, you should definitely check out these ideas.

Magnetic spice jars are a great way to get your spices organized and within easy reach. You can even create visual displays with them if you are particularly artsy. The best thing about these is that they are easy to craft or buy and easy to set up. The hardest part is normally transferring all your spices into new jars, and that is really more tedious than difficult.

The awesome magnetic rack pictured on the right is a DIY project from the Pennywise Cook (link below).

Magnetic spice racks are actually pretty easy to make yourself. All you need are a few materials and some time and patience. Check out these projects to learn how to make your own!

Lazy susans can be great for spices. You can put them in a cabinet or on a counter and just spin to find the correct spice. You can even buy lazy susans that are specifically designed for spices. I had one for years and loved it. It sat on the counter out of the way, and whenever I needed a spice, it was a breeze to find it. Mine even came fully stocked and labeled.

Pictured on the right is the 16 jar Olde Thompson Square Rotating Spice Rack, which also comes fully stocked and labeled, available at Target. Click the picture if you want to check it out in more detail!

If you don't want to shell out money for a pre-made lazy susan style rack, you can always try your hand at making one yourself.

Pull out organizers give you a compact organization without sacrificing the findability (like readability only with location) of your spices. These can be fitted into cabinets or drawers or be part of the cabinets or drawers themselves. They may be tiered, horizontal, or vertical. Whatever space you have for a spice rack, you can probably find a pull out rack that will fit your needs.

The example on the right shows some cute handmade pull out racks that fit right into your spice cabinet, available on Amazon. Click the picture to check out their details.