10 Different Ways to Organize All Your Spices
One of the many things that most people struggle with while cooking is not being able to find their desired spices. If you are messy while cooking, chances are, you lose track of your spice jars every time you step into the kitchen to cook. In order to solve this problem, we have listed down 10 easy ways of organizing your kitchen without taking the help of a professional.
10 Different Ways of Organizing Spices
Magnetizing cans
This is one very effective way of organizing your spices. Magnetizing the spice cans to your cabinet doors or the wall allows you to keep more stuff in the kitchen without making a mess while cooking. It saves you a lot of space in the cabinets and you can store more items if you want instead of putting them in one corner of your refrigerator.
Attach magnetic strips to the doors of your cabinet so that you can just magnetize the cans to it without doing any hard work. All you need to do is open the cabinet door and reach out for the particular spice you’re looking for.
You can also fasten these strips to your wall below or beside the cabinets if you want. This also gives your kitchen a different and organized look.
Pull-out Rack
In order to create a pull-out rack in your kitchen cabinet, head to the nearest general store and pick out one of the ‘pull-out’ racks that goes well with the look of your kitchen. Place the rack in one of the cabinets in your kitchen or a drawer and attach it using screws. Make sure to tighten it so that the whole rack doesn’t fall off when you pull out the cabinet door. While cooking, just pull out the rack and you’re ready to go. Try using labeled containers or the ones made out of glass to make the work faster.
Test Tube Racks
Having a test tube rack in your kitchen will give away a very unique and creative appearance to your kitchen. All you have to do is buy a beautiful test tube rack according to your taste and a couple of test tubes to store your spices. Attach the rack to the wall below or beside the kitchen cabinets. Use the help of a professional if needed.
Since the test tubes are made out of glass, they are likely to shatter if the rack falls off. Hence make sure to fit the rack tightly. This unique way of storing your spices will also save you a lot of space in the cabinet that you can use later to store in other items.
Tin Cans
Identical tin cans with transparent lids can be a very good option for organizing your spice items. Label them and stack them up inside a drawer, cabinet or on the kitchen counters.
Under the Cabinets
You can also place magnetic strips under the cabinet and attach the spice cans to it. This is a very unique way and will bring a creative touch to your kitchen. It will also be easier for you to reach the jars since they will be attached right on top of the kitchen counters.
Magnetic patterns
There are a lot of good looking magnetic jars or containers available in the market. You can either place a magnetic shaft on the wall or keep them on the kitchen counter. They will all be attached to each other and your spices will not be all over the place while cooking. You can find them in different shapes and styles. You will only have to pick the one you like the most.
Round Drawer Inserts
Place a drawer insert inside one of the drawers where you can fit in all your spices. Buy an insert with separate round columns or rows to place your little jars. You will have to clean the insert from time to time to keep the drawer clean. If you still have time in hand, label the jars to make work easier.
Hooks
Hooking jars can also be a new and artistic way of organizing your spice jars. Put nails on the wall below the cabinet or beside it to hang the jars. You can also buy different colored jars to make your kitchen look a bit colorful.
Slide Out Cabinet
You can hire a professional to create a special slide out cabinet for your spice jars to make the kitchen look more interesting. You can cook for hours without having to move all around the kitchen because all your spices will be in the same place.
Revolving Spice Rack
Though a bit pricey, the revolving spice racks are widely available in markets and all you’ll need to do is make a trip to the market and buy one that matches with other countertops in your kitchen. They are very easy to handle since you only need to give it a spin and take out the spice jar you are looking for. Label the lids so that you don’t have to take all the jars out while finding one. You will be saving up a lot of space since the jars will be stacked inside the rack.
Apart from these ten ideas, there are a lot more unique ways to organize your spice jars and make your kitchen look classy at the same time. You can buy storage shelf stacks to fill up the empty space in your cabinets. Grip holders may also be a good option if you have little space in your kitchen. Stand holders will prove to be a good addition to your countertops; however, try buying similar looking countertops to make things look more systematized and tasteful.
5 Different Ways of Arranging the Spice Containers
Once you have organized your containers, it is time for you to take the time to arrange them in order. You may follow some of the ways listed below for help.
Alphabetically
Most people prefer to organize their spices alphabetically since it is easier to find an item while cooking in a hurry. Instead of making a clutter on the kitchen counters looking for a particular spice that you use almost every other day, organize them in alphabetical order.
Keep the ones that you need the most in the front row and you can put the spice containers that you rarely use in separate columns behind them according to their alphabetical categorization. This will make your work in the kitchen easier and less stressful.
So the next time when you’re stressing out trying to find a particular spice container that you may not have used in a while, stand in front of the right column and keep looking. You’ll have the container in your hand even before you know it.
You can also label the alphabets in front of every column for a faster experience. However, make sure you place the containers a few inches below the eye level so that you do not have difficulty in looking at the containers while searching.
Prioritizing your containers
If you cook on a regular basis, it is pretty obvious that you use certain spices more than the others. For example, if items like salt, pepper and garlic powder are used almost every time you step into the kitchen, it is highly likely that you would want to keep those particular containers right in front of your eyes so that you can reach them easily.
Following this method will also allow others to find the spices without any difficulty. You will not have to step into the kitchen to hand them the containers every time someone new steps foot in the kitchen.
Labeling the containers
Labeling the containers with bold dark letters makes it easier for your eyes to look for the spices. While it can be hard to look for a particular spice among all the powdered spices, labeling the containers can prevent you from using the wrong ingredient while cooking. This will also help your friends and family if they ever end up using your kitchen.
In order to do this, buy sticky notes and attach them to the containers. Using a marker pen, write down the names of the spices on the sticky notes. Though this may take you an hour or so to sort out the containers, it is still worth it. You can also buy labeled containers from your nearby general stores which will save you the time of labeling them yourself. Not to mention, they are also very cheap.
Organizing Them Thematically
Even though this method may not be the most efficient way of organizing your spices, you can still give it a shot to see if it works out for you. You can either separate them according to their nationality or by keeping the seasoning and baking stuff apart in different shelves or cabinets. For example, you can keep the spices that you use for Mexican or Indian food in separate shelves so that you can easily reach out to the exact stack while cooking either of the cuisines.
Apart from separating the spices used for different cuisines, you can also try separating the jars according to their specific purpose of cooking. For example, items like baking powder, chocolate, flour etc. can be kept together in a separate shelve. This way while baking, you can just pull out that particular drawer or cabinet and have access to all the ingredients required for baking.
Colors
Somehow this particular technique works great for an individual group of people. They keep their spices in containers made out of glass so that it is easier to see and locate the spices by simply looking at their color and shape. You can arrange them beginning from the lightest shade to the darker ones. You can also separate different shades of colors on different shelves. That way you will know where to look for the spices while cooking.
Things You Should Know
Even though storing spices in identical jars may make your tools in the kitchen look elegant, transferring the spices from their original containers can be a real pain for some people. Firstly, it is time-consuming and it is not necessary that all the spices will fit into the jars that you have bought. The proportions may not be right and you may have to store the rest of the spices in some corner of your refrigerator or cabinets.
Chances are, you will also forget about those because they will not be in front of your eyesight. This will also add up to your expenses since spices can be quite expensive. There is a good chance of wasting a lot of spices if you keep on buying more from the store and forget about the leftovers hiding at the back of your cabinet.
Arranging the jars alphabetically may not work out for some people. The main reason for this to not work out maybe because recipes do not list down the ingredients alphabetically. Also if you are in a hurry while cooking, chances are you will often forget how you have arranged the spices. Once you have taken out a couple of them from the cabinet, it will also take some time to arrange them back to their alphabetical order.
On top of that, if you have family or friends over, they may not be aware of the alphabetical arrangement and there is a higher risk of messing up all the jars. This will eventually result in more work for you since you will have to arrange them back to their right order again.
Bottom Line
It is necessary that you throw out old spices every three or four years since most of them lose their perfect touch after some time. Clean the jars from time to time, if possible, once every month in order to keep things more neat and tidy. You can also keep track of the ones that you have run out of and make a trip to the store before your stock is completely empty. However, you will be able to keep your kitchen more organized using these inventive ideas and keep your kitchen clean and pristine.