I’ve got a particularly individualized spice system in the new house. It’s not like the last one had great digs for my cooking/baking ingredients – I’d arranged them in a lazy susan corner cabinet that had the exceedingly annoying habit of being far too wobbly for comfort. Granted, it only collapsed once, but one episode of painstakingly pulling out sixty-odd spices along with several dozen tupperware will make a girl jaded.
We moved into the new kitchen and lo and behold, no corner cabinet. No love lost there, but it did mean I needed to find a new home for the spices. I finally settled on an overhead cabinet beside the stove. It has a shelf, though, making it unworkable for one of those tall rotating towers that holds a zillion spices so I had to make due with two separate shelving units.
Thus the particularly individualized spice system.
It’s alphabetized because I wasn’t raised by wolves, but I found myself in a bit of a jam moving forward from there. Logic dictates As kick off the top shelf unit with Zs finishing up the bottom one. Except – as BrightSide would say – I’m a bit of a Shorty McShortster and didn’t feel like hauling out the step stool every time I need something on the upper level. Which meant I needed my most used spices on the bottom shelf, and they’d need to be alphabetized (because I wasn’t raised by wolves), so I’d have to make peace with the sets overall being out of order alphabet-wise.
There was some existential angst.
Garlic powder and garlic salt? Definitely on the bottom shelf. Ground cumin goes in salsa so that makes the cut, too. Ground cloves? I’m not even sure what those are for so top shelf. I’m pretty sure star anise and ground star anise are equally random so they’ll be right at home up top. The system makes perfect sense to me but no doubt would seem rather random to an outsider. Is it an ideal solution? Maybe not, but the food gets seasoned just the same.
Linda hosts Stream of Consciousness Saturday. This week’s prompt is “ground.” Use it as a noun or a verb in any tense (i.e. grind). Have fun!
For a long time I too, had a spinny spice rack. Seemed fine enough. Lots of people have them. Then I bought those magnetic spice containers at World Market — more costly but uniform, stable, and tidy. (Also, only the US Army would build housing for families of 5-8, with a billion square feet and a hundred rooms and the tiniest kitchen you ever did see. I don’t need a living room and a den, I need a place to put the stock pot I use to fill six bellies, but whatever.)
However, we moved here and there was a roll out spice rack built in by the stove and it’s convenient, so yay!
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A built in spice rack?? YOU ARE LIVING THE HIGH LIFE. That is a beautiful kitchen amenity, friend, and I am happy you’ve found it.
And I agree — give me a decent kitchen over almost everything else and I’m thrilled.
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It is nifty. Big kitchen is need #1 in a house for me. Space. Espace. Bueno. Not like, 10 steps to each amenity, but you know, big.
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Exactly. The girl has no sense of moderation yet so when we were looking at houses she swooned over cavernous kitchens and I’m like, yeah, okay, it’s gorgeous but it doesn’t work for me. Plus nobody needs a that many bedrooms for 2 kids. Sheesh.
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LOL! I do know a woman who thought she built her dream kitchen and it’s beautiful but it’s too big to be fully functional, she regrets.
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My family must have been raised by wolves … Wait …. ANYWAY, they made fun of my alphabetizing my spices, so I came up with a new method: I put the whole and chunk spices on one side and the ground spices on the other side. Within each section, I group the spices I use together. Cumin and chili powder. Seasoned salt and lemon pepper. Smoked paprika and thyme have to go in the middle, because the paprika is ground and the thyme is whole. Lucky for me I like wolves.
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You know what the one thought that popped into my head when I read this was? That if you’re ever held hostage in your home and forced to cook for your captors you can buy time by pretending to search for your spices because NOBODY will decode that system. 😆😆😆
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😀 LOL
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I don’t alphabetize mine, either. I don’t even have your system. I just have chaos, somewhat determined by amount of usage and size of container.
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Thanks for motivating me to organize my spices, because someone in our house must’ve been raised by wolves. We have spices way back on the top shelf that my husband brought when we combined households in 2012. Some were probably old then. Maybe this winter, we’ll see what’s up there. Good job using the prompt!
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Thanks, JoAnna. I guess I’m seriously out of touch because I’ve been shocked (SHOCKED!) at how many people live with spices all willy nilly in the cabinet. Do that purge — it’ll make your heart happy. 😉
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We don’t have all that many spices we use, and I finally threw out all the way expired ones. We have a wire, hanging rack in the pantry area for the taller jars, and a small turntable thing in a cabinet by the stove. Nothing is in order though. 🙂
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Aha, someone of the “it works for us” variety. Lots of people are saying their spices aren’t in a particular order. Partly it boggles the mind, partly it makes me wonder if I’m leaning a little ocd on this one. 🤷🏻♀️
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A universal problem, Laura. we have all our spices in a lower drawer that pulls out. Obscure to the rear. Front alpha arranged. I still can’t find anything.
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Aargghh! Why don’t they build in a space for this?? It’s not like it’s an unusual problem. Sounds like a kitchen design flaw to me…
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I know right?
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I buy my spices from my store’s bulk section and finally settled on keeping them in 4ounce mason jars, labels on lid, in a drawer. Not alphabetized – does that mean I was born in a wolves’ den?
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It means you have way more patience than I do. Digging out four different spices means singing the alphabet song in my head — if I was just rooting around in a cabinet I fear things might get broken in exasperation. 😆
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Alphabetically, Dewey Decimal system, or by born on date. Are the spices added to the recipe alphabetically too ? Somewhere adjacent to my formative years I was influenced by Monty Python and I am fairly sure there was a silly spicing episode too… and right after the spice rack they moved directly to the rack of the Spanish Inquisition…
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😆😆 No doubt, I’ve found myself in the middle of a new recipe and it’s *felt* like a Spanish Inquisition torture device. One day if I’m feeling particularly spunky I’ll translate my spices into Spanish and organize them that way…
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I love this post – LOL – I feel your pain, and our spice rack is organized much the same. Mr. does most of the cooking in our house, so they are arranged in his preferred order. I always resort to pulling out the stool to get a better view of what I’m looking for. Happy Saturday – enjoy whatever it is you have cooked up for fun!
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Yep, Majority Chef earns organization rights. I can only imagine that it slows you down when you’re working but big picture, it’s a win. 😉
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LOL – right on – big picture wins. I do appreciate the spices being organized alphabetically in the store though – could you imagine the nightmare it would be to shop if they weren’t? I was thinking about you yesterday when I got home and Mr. was digging through the spice cupboard looking for a certain spice he was sure we still had…nope…couldn’t find it. I just smiled. I was guilt-free – he did that organizing all on his own! LOL!
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😆😆😆
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Organizing spices might be a life’s work. I like your approach. My wife, also on the shorter side, forces double and triple duty out of the bottom shelf. She had me cut small blocks of wood to put under the second, third and fourth row. Spices, all on the first shelf, but she can see the labels.
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Ahhh…a MacGyver workaround. She’s a smart lady!!
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Don’t say that too loud (or too often) but, yeah.
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😉
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That’s a winner of a system. Might be over complicated for our spice collection. All 9 of them.
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And I thought I’d pared down! 😆 I finally figured I’d hit the limit, I had all the spices a medium level cook needs, until I hit that cajun fish and grits recipe. Fast forward to me in the store searching for white pepper — sheesh!
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I agree it only has to suit your convenience. Sounds a good system.
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Agreed. And if the hubby *does* cook in here then at least there’s some rhyme & reason to guide him in a search. 😉
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I should really say *when*. He cooks, it’s just that I cook more.
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