Have you ever rummaged around looking for a specific spice, and vowed someday to organize your kitchen spices so it doesn’t take 10 minutes to find the cinnamon next time? It’s time to seize the day, and make it happen! Today I’m going to outline how to make reorganizing your kitchen spices fun.
I had a spice rack that I got as a gift as a college student that gave me a great starting point for fundamental kitchen spices. However, for some reason, the rack had some random spices that I never used, such as celery salt and dill weed. These spices were taking up valuable space in my spice rack, while the spices that we use more frequently were in a hard to reach corner of our cabinet. So I decided to use my crafty skills and re-label the jars so we could easily see our most used spices.
Getting Started
First, measure the lid of the jars and find some circular chalkboard stickers that will neatly cover the top. You’ll also need a pen, used to write on the labels. Since my lids and labels are black, I also bought a fine point white paint pen.
Then decide which spices you use, and which are just taking up valuable space. Take out all of your spices and place them on your kitchen table. Then organize your spices from most-used to least used. Since we only had 20 jars in our rack, I wanted to pick the top 20 for countertop display. If you have any spices that you don’t use at all, or are more than a couple years old, throw them out. I definitely poured out that 3 year old unused celery salt into the trash can!
If you are repurposing jars like me, soak any empty jars and all the lids in soapy water for a half hour. Then carefully wash out each jar you’ll be reusing, and set them aside to completely dry. Scrape off the stickers for each lid – I found out it’s totally okay to have a little sticky residue as the lids would be covered with new stickers anyway.
Label and Fill the Jars
Now for the fun part! Write out the spice name on each label for the new spices and let the paint dry. Tip: it’s better to write the label on the sticker before placing on the jar, in case you make any typos.
Now you’re ready to pour the new spices into the dry, clean jars. This part can be a little tricky, so you may want to create a funnel from paper to help pour the powdery spices. It’s important to note that you’ll probably need to use a different clean paper for each spice, because some of the spices like to leave a residue. If you have a reusable funnel, just clean and dry between uses.
Alphabetize
To make spices easier to find, place them in the rack, or on your shelf, in alphabetical order. Surprisingly, we’ve kept the spices in alphabetical order for a long time, because we just put the spices back in their place.
I hope this post helps motivate you to organize your kitchen spices! It’ll be worth it the next time you’re making a recipe, and need to find the spices quickly.