Organizing spices

25 October 2018

Storing spices can be a challenge. Spice collections have a way of growing and it can be difficult to devise a way to keep the most frequently used spices close at hand.

In my own home, I store spices in narrow pull-spice cabinets we had installed when we renovated our kitchen. I’ve divided spices into two categories: sweet and savory. The sweet (baking) spices are stored in the upper spice cabinet and the savory (cooking) spices in the lower spice cabinet. Within the savory, I’ve grouped together the spices that we use together. For example, we make a taco seasoning mix that’s comprised of seven different spices. I store those together on one shelf, so it’s easy to access them when I need them. That works for us and is definitely aided by the fact that we have these spice cabinets.

Here’s a photo of my spice cabinets, so you can see the kind of cabinets I’m talking about:

We recently helped a client whose has a spice shelf mounted beneath her upper cabinets. That shelf was crowded with spices and the overflow spices cluttered the countertop. We went through all the spices and got rid of any that had expired. The client selected the ten spices she uses most frequently. We decanted those ten into 5-ounce wide-mouth spice jars I purchased at the Container Store. I handwrote labels for them. The remainder of the spices went into a small handled pantry basket that was placed in the cabinet above.

Here’s a photo of the spice shelf, along with a close up of a few bottles, so you can see the labels. It’s pleasing to the eye and has worked out really well for her!

These are just a couple of ideas for spice storage. A search on Spice Storage at the Container Store’s website will show you a lot of different products options.

Some people like to store their spices alphabetically for easy retrieval. I prefer to store the functionally, which makes both retrieval and storage easy. Do what works for you!

Tagged with: kitchen organization, spice storage