A few years ago, I had done an initial revamp of my space cabinet. (See previous post Organize Your Spices – Tiffany Meiter). This was a great process for a while. However, a few of our jars recently broke! We had realized this set up was now 5 years old and we had since then grown our collection a new solution was required.
After some research on the newer ways that you can organize your spices, we settled on these pullout spice racks that we were able to double our storage space!
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Here is our most recent before picture, broken containers and all. As you can see our collection has grown and we were really starting to stuff things where we couldn’t see them.
We used to keep our backstock of spices behind the spice rack. So, we had to pull out the whole rack in order to refill. (Which might be why we had some broken jars) For the most part this worked out great. A little annoying but we were able to keep everything together. However, we discovered this new spice rack where we can double our spices!
First, we took everything out of the main spice cabinet and the other cabinets where we stuffed our expanded collection. I put everything on the table and clean the cabinet, so we had a nice fresh start.
There are 801 labels that came with the jars, including blank ones with a chalk pen. However, I did only commit to labeling the spices that we would always buy more of. For the other jars, I used a wet erase marker to write directly onto the jars (Forgive my terrible handwriting). These are spices I think we will change out more often as we run out and try new flavors. I like flexibility.
When I started to organize the spices, I grouped them by regular cooking use spices and did a separate group for grilling spices.
After everything was cleaned up and, in the jars, this is what I had left over to figure out storage. The right group is back stock of what is in the jars and will get stored above our fridge until we need to refill. The middle bunch is stuff I want to also fit in the cabinet but won’t go into jars. I was so excited to see how few there were!
We installed the spice rack. It was very easy to install, only took a few minutes. The cabinet opening is about 12 inches, they call for 5 inches for each rack, so it was a perfect fit. I placed the jars in the rack in my preferred order. On the top shelf I have a lazy susan where we used to keep additional spices. Now since I can have all the spices in the 40 jars on the bottom shelf. I was able to add all my vinegars and other items used frequently for cooking in the same cabinet. They used to live above the fridge, so this super helpful for easier reach. Due to the height, we did lose the middle shelf. However, it was so short that it didn’t really hold much that was useful. Totally worth the compromise.
The spice rack also came with labels for the front, which are meant to help you know what spices are in which shelf. We also opted not to use those currently since we may switch things out.
The racks just pull out and you can see 20 jars at once! This has really helped us be able to see what we have to cook with and stop digging for the spices that didn’t fit in our previous 20 jar only set up. If you have small space or deeper cabinets, I highly recommend the shelves that pull out, this keeps things from getting shoved to the back and getting lost.
In this case, we did need to find a new solution for our backstock. Which above the fridge was a perfect spot! It’s too hard to reach for daily use items.
The backstock storage above the fridge is in clear plastic bins I can easily pull down when I need to go through and refill.
Hopefully this gives you some inspiration on creative solutions to keeping organized!
