When Mr. Fox and I were living in Indy, I had a full spice cabinet. It was overflowing with little bottles and jars of random things. It wasn’t the most organized. In fact, it was far from it! I had about 10 or so that I used regularly that sat in the front, and everything else that I used infrequently sat behind those. It was cluttered, but it worked.

This changed when we moved. I decided that I was going to finally break down and do some spice organization. Mr. Fox and I got a membership to BJ’s Wholesale, which is similar to Sam’s and Costco (though it seems to only be on the east coast), and with it, I decided to stock up on larger bottles and jars of spices that I use often. Have you ever bought a small bottle of chili powder at the grocery store? One, it’s tiny. I can use up almost a whole jar of it on one batch of my crock pot chili. Two, those little bottles are expensive! Depending on the spice, they can be as much as $5 a bottle! The larger bottles of the same spices at Sam’s Club and BJ’s are around the same price, and you get so much more!

After I satisfied my craving for large bottles of spices, I brought them all home and combined them with what I already had that I brought here when we moved. I had a bit of a major problem on my hands. Spices were EVERYWHERE. I had tiny jars of allspice and cream of tartar. I had ginormous bottles of chili powder and cinnamon. And I didn’t have the space for them. Our kitchen is rather…dated. We lack cabinets in places we need them. We did remedy this, but that is another story for another post. In the meantime, for almost a month, I had a box of random spice bottles shoved in the corner of our kitchen. Add those of course to the number of bagged organic spices I bought from The Fresh Market.

It all clicked for me a couple of weeks ago when I happened upon a post in my feed reader about how to organize kitchen spices. Lori from Recipe Girl did a guest post on TidyMom‘s blog, and that really got the gears in my head going. If it’s one thing I’m definitely NOT, it’s organized. In almost every aspect of my life, I prefer chaotic organization. The messier the better. Mr. Fox tried to reorganize my desk once and I went nuts. In my head of course.

I digress.

So in my quest to organize my spices, I researched the little containers that Lori was using for her spices. I loved the idea of the magnetic bottoms, but I read some pretty horrible reviews of these little containers. The cheaper they are, the less reliable they seem to be. The ones linked above are apparently not airtight, and I’ve also read about spices drying out. I researched the more expensive ones on Amazon and decided that I didn’t want to spend all that money. So I went with my tried and true.

IKEA.

For those that know me, you know that I am a big proponent of anything and everything from IKEA. Sure, they have a stigma of having cheap crappy furniture, but in all the years that I’ve been shopping there, I’ve never had any issues. The majority of our living room is furnished in IKEA. We had quite a bit of IKEA furniture in our old apartment as well. Needless to say, we’ve been fortunate thus far in our purchases. That being said, they have a series called GRUNDTAL, which is kitchen components. Included in this series are magnetic-back containers. I thought that these would be my spice saviors. However, comparatively speaking, they are HUGE.

Back to square one, right? Wrong.

Also in the GRUNDTAL series, they had this nifty spice rack, that you can hang on one of the corresponding GRUNDTAL rails (which we’ve installed several of in our kitchen). When you’re in the store, and you’re in the area of this spice rack, they have it paired with these wonderful spice jars. I admit, I squee’d a little when I saw them. You can ask Mr. Fox, he was there, embarrassed. The RAJTAN jars are airtight, with a rubber gasket on the inside of the lid, which is what those ones that Lori got from Bed Bath and Beyond were lacking. And, they fit so nicely in my GRUNDTAL spice rack, which is hanging so conveniently by my cooking area. The rack holds 15 jars, and each pack of jars comes with 4, so if you buy 4 packs, you’ll have 1 left over. My only true complaint is that I have more spices that jars. So I am going to have to buy another set up. Which, believe me, doesn’t bother me at all.

With my handy dandy collapsable kitchen funnel from Crate and Barrel, I set to work in filling my spiffy little jars. I was armed with my little removable labels and a pen. Each jar would have a label on the lid with the name of its contents, and then there’s also a label on the front of the jar with the date it was filled.

As you can see, my spices are now organized! They aren’t in alphabetical order, and they likely won’t be. Remember, chaotic organization! Like I mentioned before, I have more spices than jars, so I will have to buy another set up. But now that everything has its place, I feel a little better about my kitchen. Eventually, my kitchen will be completely organized, and I can take more photos of it.

For now, I’ll just go back to the boxes that are shoved in the corner.

Disclaimer: I do not represent IKEA. They did not ask me to write about their products, and I am not being compensated for my reviews. This is 100% my own opinion. 

adventures spices sams club bjs ikea spice jars

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