The Much Needed Spice Cabinet Clean-Up

Remember when I said I had a few things on my "To Do" list. Well, I finally got around to cleaning up the spice cabinet. It was horrible. Every time I wanted to use a certain spice I practically had to take everything out of the cabinet just to find it...and that wasn't practical. Please don't judge me by this cabinet..I only moved in 6 months ago, remember...this wasn't all me..it was a lot me, but not all..

I need things in my kitchen to be organized because I love, love, love to cook and I don't like to feel rushed when I'm cooking.

My solution was to buy canning jars so that my spices would all be in the same type of container...

These are Kerr Wide-Mouth pint & half pint canning jars. I love the look of all that glass & the silver lids. Does that make me weird? I also knew I would need to label them so I made labels with a label machine

In case you're wondering, yes, I re-printed the labels that didn't print well. I think I mentioned before that I'm a control freak perfectionist selective. Anyhoo...This is what I started with...

I should probably mention that I first washed & dried the jars and lids (you never know what kind of factory muck is on them)

Next I started filling all my jars & adding all my labels (I don't know what happened to the pictures of this step...I couldn't find them when I was posting)

Anyway this is what my cabinet looked like when I was done...

Pretty, right?..well, OK, maybe not pretty, but definitely better than what I started with...(please ignore that red lidded plastic container..the ground cinnamon would not fit in a pint jar..darn it!)

Other than that eyesore, I am really happy with the new look...

But wait there's more!!  If you call now...lol..starting to sound like a late night info-mercial, but there really is more...

The jar of carne asada spice needed a different kind of lid...This is a spice that needs to be lightly shaken onto meat, pouring or scooping this spice out would not work.

 I would have to pull a MacGyver. (Don't know where I would be if I hadn't watched MacGyver all those years ago...Thanks MacGyver people) So, I went to the hardware store and picked up a piece of window screen. Once I got home I cut a piece to fit inside the rim of the lid. I just traced the flat insert of the lid to get the right size.

Next, I glued the piece of screen into the rim with Tacky Glue (not yet sure if the Tacky Glue will work long-term..I'm testing it out)

So this would take care of the "shaker" part of the lid, but I still needed the jar to "close," so I glued the flat insert to the rim using hot glue and a small hinge.

It's not super pretty, but right now I'm looking for function rather than beauty.

Here's what it looks like open...

Pretty good, huh?

Lets hope it stays on & that the screen doesn't pop out mid-shake... I'll let you know if it does fall out the next time we have a BBQ...fingers crossed that it doesn't!

So that's the story behind my spice cabinet...

What kind of Spring cleaning are you doing??

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