These are not my spices in my kitchen!! This is how they organise spices at a market in Dubai - thanks to wix photos for the picture!
All our spices were stored - quite haphazardly for many years in a wall cupboard - and then as you know, my daughter came back from university with her own collection of herbs and spices! Queue an emoji of me pulling my hair out!! There wasn't any chance of all the herbs and spices fitting into the little cupboard now!
This is our cupboard before adding my daughters stash!
Time to think outside of the box - or cupboard!
I had a drawer that we used for all our utensils, but it is a deep drawer and I had often thought there was wasted space in there. So my plan was to empty the spice cupboard and remove the middle shelf so that I could potentially store the utensils in there. Then transfer all the cupboard contents and my daughters herbs and spices into the drawer.
A point to note here is that I am a type of person who likes clear surfaces - I get agitated with too many things being given homes 'in plain sight' . I know that many of you will be saying I could easily put my utensils in a utensil jar right next to the stove where they are needed. I will be writing a blog post soon about how we have different 'types' when it comes to organising and as I've said in most of my previous blogs - 'one size doesn't fit all' !
I have seen on line some fantastic systems for organising spices.
Dunelm have a whole selection, https://www.dunelm.com/search?q=spice+rack, but these tend to be counter top or cupboard storage. Pinterest has many examples of spices in drawers - I have a selection on on of my pinterest boards - https://www.pinterest.co.uk/adnilenaj1314/kitchen-organisation/spices/. However, pretty as they all are and incredibly satisfying as it must be to open a drawer and see the uniform , labelled jars of herbs and spices, I am not prepared to open and decant all our jars into other jars only to have to find storage for the leftovers somewhere else in the kitchen! Again - this is down to the type of person I am.
So we decided to stand the jars in the drawer, as many of them identify their contents on the lids. I have my trusty labeller and we could label the rest. We did try to go in alphabetical order with the spices on the left and herbs on the right with mismatches and seasonings in the middle. And this is the result!!
To many it may still look unorganised, but it is functional for us as a family - it is still like this a couple of weeks down the line! Some of the labels are begining to curl but I can use a sharpie to write on the jars if I need to.
As for the utensil cupboard, that is still working too - but I need to get some better containers as I used what was at hand. As a rule of thumb I like to see if a system will work before investing in new storage! I am using a traditional utensil jar, a tall cup that came with our stick blender and an EasiYo pot at the moment!!!
As you can see the top shelf still fits in the cupboard so that houses the MEGA spices!!
I hope I have inspired you to have a look at an area that may not be working for you and give reorganising a go!
Please contact me via my email lindajharper@yahoo.com or using the chat bubble on my website, I would love to help you!
Take a look at my Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/Linda-J-Harper-Professional-Declutterer-and-Organiser-107805011001601. Peruse at your leisure, and message me if you need me!!
Comments