31 Days of Progress Day 15 :: Organizing Spices {Still in Progress}

Category: Cooking & Eating
Goal: Cook at home!
Baby Step: Organize Spices

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Maybe someone out there can help me! Maybe? Please? Ha ha.  I have a lot of dried herbs and spices.  Remember me?  Food allergy lady? Must cook everything from scratch {pretty much}?  Well, if I am going to be more disciplined about cooking healthy meals at home, and pre-cooking & freezing for those busy times…I need organization for my spices.  Here’s a picture of my current spice cabinet.  Maybe it doesn’t look too bad from a distance…

…until you pan even further back and see that I apparently also have a “Spice Counter”… {recognize my Garam Masala in the lower right part of the pic?}.  Speaking of that, I’ll be right back, going to go smell it again, cuz I’m weird like that 🙂

Okay, I’m back.  When you look at this closeup you’ll see that I have those nifty little spice “steps”, which helps a little, except that when you reach for something on the middle or back “step” you run the risk of knocking one of the more forward jars out of the cabinet and onto the counter.  This would be why I only have 11 dinner plates.

I won’t tell you who did it…except that it wasn’t me…and I was out of town…and I was on the phone with someone at home when it happened…and I heard it happen…and my dishes were a brand new investment at the time.  But I’m not bitter, really 😉

 

How about even closer up.  Ick! Yeah, that bugs me…better clean that up. I actually used to have a little white porcelain dish I used to set the pepper mill on so this wouldn’t happen.  Wonder what happened to that? Probably fell out of the cupboard and broke. Imagine that.

 

I saw a really cool idea once.  I thought I had probably pinned it on Pinterest, but I just checked, it’s not there.  Maybe I saw it on tv.  Anyway, it was a spice drawer.  All of the spices were in beautiful little jars {like my Garam Masala} and had labels on top to identify them.  I thought, “I have a couple of drawers that are not being used to their full potential!”  I have one drawer for parchment, foil, waxed paper, etc. and another one for plastic freezer bags {and some miscellaneous “stuff”} because they won’t both fit in the same drawer.

If I had a similar spice drawer with all of my “regular” sized herbs and spices I could make cute little round labels for the tops and alphabetize them {be still my lil’ ol’ first-born, organizing heart!}

Uh oh…maybe not!

Hmmm…well, I am determined to get this conquered before I go to bed tonight, so maybe I’ll just reorganize the spice cabinet…this time! I could transfer spices from taller containers to shorter ones {I tend to save the pretty square glass ones when they are empty. The perfectionist in me would love to have identical little glass jars, the not-rolling-in-the-dough woman in me knows probably not}…but I’ll have to save that for a later time.

What do you do with your dried herbs and spices???

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