With our new move and all that it entailed, I resurrected one of my favorite pastimes: obsessive organizing. Of course, some things are not obsessive and just common sense. (Although I think my husband might think my common sense IS obsessive.) One area of life that has been driving me crazy is our spice storage situation. We use A LOT of spices. I love to cook from scratch, and I like it flavorful. Perhaps it is a rebellion against how I was raised, with Midwest blandness. The spice situation became an issue when we moved near a Penzey’s shop. Suddenly I had access to so many staples, in bulk at great prices. This created a storage issue. The series of plastic bags and IKEA jars in a drawer was not cutting it. The bags didn’t fit in the jars and I had trouble finding what I was looking for, not to mention, it was just a mess. So, I looked at the abundance of canning (Mason) jars we had sitting around from all of those pickles and tomatoes and decided it was time for an upgrade.
Not only does an entire four ounce bag of many of my favorite spices fit into a mason jar, but having uniform storage jars made it so much easier to fit our collection in cabinets.
If you are anything like me with your spice collection, and have too many jars sitting around, give it a try. This may not be a groundbreaking project, but it has certainly made my kitchen a bit more functional. Plus, we culled our mason jar collection down to a more manageable size. Now we just have a few for drinking out of and food storage. That is, until my in-laws come over with more overflow from their vegetable garden!