I love to use spices in my cooking, but I’m not a fan of organizing them.

The bottles come in different sizes, and they are all randomly shaped. My biggest pet peeve with spice bottles is that I can’t get my measuring spoon into most bottles. I also don’t have a place to store them in my kitchen; they were in the pantry down the hall, so it made using them inconvenient. They were also a jumbled mess despite my repeated attempts to organize them.

I decided to take action.

I went to the dollar store and bought packages of little jars for about $1.00each. Each packet contained eight small jars. Then I used the labels I had at home for bulk mailing (which happened to be Avery labels). I searched the internet for free labels templates until I found one that I liked. I downloaded it and labeled each jar. Then we filled the jars. We left a few extra spots at the end of the rows in case we need to add more spices.

I had my husband build me a frame using a 1×3 and a 2×4 sheet of luan for the dividers. I think his total cost was about $8.00. We built the frame based on the spices we have, but it could easily be made bigger or smaller. He mounted it on the kitchen wall. Everything is organized and at my fingertips. Bonus, the spices are easy to access, and I know my measuring spoon will fit in each jar.

A note on spices, I tend to buy mine in bulk on the internet, at ethnic grocery stores such as my local Indian market where they are fresh and very cheap or in bulk containers at Sam’s club. I try never to buy spices at the grocery store (unless I can’t find it elsewhere) because they are pricey.

How do you organize your spices?