Spice Up Your Life

No big leaps forward on the cupboard door sanding front; I had errands to run yesterday and didn't have time to sand a thing. But I did get started on some fall decorating, as evidenced by the state of my craft room right now:

Either that or we've been burglarized and the thieves were only looking for glitter and ribbon.

There is one kitchen project finished - it's a small change but it has had a big impact.

This tiny shelf above the stove is the spice rack we've been using for years. It was already installed when we moved in, and since we didn't have another spice rack we just kept using it. It was better than nothing, right?

As you can see, it only holds about 10-12 bottles. So we would keep our most-used spices there and everything else was shoved into the pantry. It was kind of gross though because the bottles would get covered in cooking grease and have to be wiped off all the time.

But the spice you want is never the spice that's handy (I think that's a famous saying, isn't it?), so I decided to do a little rearranging. We have a drawer right beside the stove that is just a catch-all for things we don't know what else to do with. A junk drawer I guess you'd say.

It wasn't really junky though, it just had takeout menus, matches, candles, a measuring tape. Oh and a turkey baster - because you never know when I'm going to get the crazy urge to roast a turkey. For the record, that'd be never.

I moved the menus to the front hall drawer, threw out some of the stuff we never use (bye bye baster) and relocated everything else - to a rarely used shelf up above. It seems we have more storage space than we thought.

With an entire empty drawer available I started moving the spices over. Everything we use fits in perfectly, with the larger refill bottles staying in the pantry. It all looks so tidy, and it's nice having all of my spices right there beside the stove, where I actually use them.

You might wonder why I didn't alphabetize the jars - I did at first, but I didn't like how they looked so I changed everything back. Instead, the spices I use most often are closer to the front.

Wow, I didn't realize we had so much garlic. Just call me Buffy.