Are you someone who has a completely disorganized spice and baking cabinet? I was one of those people until I finally decided to bite the bullet and do a spice and baking cabinet organization project in my kitchen. This is a simple organizing project that can easily be done in a few hours or less! I just love easy organizing projects like these.
My spice and baking cabinet organization was a huge success! It went over a million times more smoothly than my pantry organization project from a couple of weeks ago. I’m not going to lie, my pantry organization was a disaster. The end result was amazing, but the process it took to get there was not a fun one. You can see the transformation here and hear about all the things I did wrong along the way.
The teacher in me loved how I just used a homophone in that last sentence. Anyone who can tell me what a homophone is will get a gold star sticker! Comment below and I’ll send it to you in an email 🙂
Back on topic. I came across this quote today and I found it so fitting.
Making mistakes simply means you are learning faster. ~Weston Agor
I feel like I had something similar to this hanging on the wall in every classroom I ever taught in. I preached it constantly to my students. In order to grow and get better at anything, you must fail and make mistakes. Life is all about making mistakes. It’s part of being a human.
With that mindset, I took what I learned from my dreadful pantry experience and set forth to make my spice and baking cabinet organization a much easier process.
And I succeeded! It’s still not perfect, but who’s perfect anyway, right?
BEFORE Photo of My Spice and Baking Cabinet
How do you have a successful Spice and Baking Cabinet Organizing experience? Follow these steps!
Create a well-thought-out plan
Make a shopping day for supplies
Label and fill your storage containers (You will need this printable to keep track of expiration dates / Fill out the form below for the password. It’s free!)
Organize your containers
Stand back and admire your work
Have a purge session
Every organizing project should start with a good thorough purge session. Get into those cabinets and start clearing everything out of them. The only thing that should be left in your cabinet is a ton of salt granules all over the place…or at least that’s what was in my cabinets.
Once you have everything pulled out of the cabinets, go through item by item, and check for expiration dates. You’ll be amazed how many of your spices have expired. I know I was. 2006 was the oldest date I found. Zach was three then. He’s now a high schooler. Need I say more.
There’s good news and bad news when it comes to expired spices. The good news is it’s perfectly fine to eat expired spices and seasonings and they are completely harmless. The bad news is that expired spices and seasonings lose their strength over time and you’ll get less flavor when adding them to your dishes.
With that in mind, I kept all spices with an expiration date of 2017 or later. Yes, I am aware it’s 2018, but I thought one-year-old spices would still be okay.
Create a well-thought-out plan
This is a big one! I didn’t do this when organizing my pantry and it was a total time suck. Why? Because I ended up making a ridiculous amount of trips to the store since I had no clue what I needed in terms of supplies for my project.
With everything pulled out of the cabinets, you can see what items you are needing to store. I went through and wrote a list of every spice I had so that I could make sure to get enough spice jars for them. I also looked through all my baking supplies and determined how many jars I would need for things such as chocolate chips, baking powder, nuts, etc. I looked at all the packages and containers to determine how many ounces they were so I knew what size containers I would need. It sounds like a lot of work but I promise you the alternative of not being prepared is much worse!
When I was done going through everything, I ended up with two lists. I had a list of the different storage containers I would need for my project and then a grocery list of all the spices, seasonings and baking supplies I needed now that I threw out the expired ones.
Make a shopping day for supplies
This is my favorite step! This woman loves to shop, what can I tell ya. Please do yourself a favor and make sure to take your shopping list with you. I know someone who has gone through all the work of making a list to be organized and then left it on the kitchen counter on their way out the door. This person will remain nameless but she did tell me she felt like a total dummy and vowed to never let it happen again…
Places I love to shop for organizing projects are Target, Ikea, Home Goods, World Market, Bed, Bath & Beyond, and The Container Store.
Here are the products I used. Click on the photo for more information.
Aqua Spice Jar
Glass jars in multiple sizes
Spice Jars
3 Tiered Spice Rack
Lazy Susan
Baskets
Mason Jars
Label and Fill Your Storage Containers
While shopping is by far my favorite step, labeling my storage containers are by far the WORST part, hands down!
I make all my labels with my Cricut Explore Air 2 machine out of vinyl. Although the machine does all the cutting for you, the removing of the excess vinyl and sticking on the labels takes FOREVER. Just think about it. I had 24 spice jars alone that needed labels. Plus, they were teeny, tiny which makes removing the excess vinyl extremely time-consuming. If it wasn’t for my Type A personality I would’ve just left my spices in the original containers and called it a day. Unfortunately, I love uniformity and the end result is just too pretty. So I put on some music and spent the day creating and adhering labels.
Easier alternatives to the Cricut labels.
You can use a Dymo label maker! I got one for Christmas from my mom and realized after I was already knee deep in making my vinyl labels that this would’ve made my life so much easier. Duh!
Google “free pantry labels” and you will find a bazillion free pages of labels to choose from. My suggestion is to buy sticker printer paper. It’s basically just labels but instead of there being labels to remove, you have just one big sticker that’s 8.5” x 11”. Simply print on the sticker paper, cut out the labels, and then adhere them to your storage containers. Tada!
Once everything is labeled you can start adding your ingredients to them. How will you keep track of the expiration dates now that you have taken the items out of their original containers? I’ve got you covered. Print out this expiration date sheet from my free resource library, place it in a sheet protector, and then use a dry erase marker to write all your ingredients and expiration dates. I did the same thing with my pantry ingredients! See…
Organize your containers
You’re finally in the home stretch. Now that all your containers are labeled and filled, you can start putting everything back in your cabinets. Place the items you are going to use the most often on the bottom and the ones you will use least often on the top. Also, place like items near one another. You don’t want spices just scattered all over the place, do you? Maybe you do, but that would drive me crazy. My OCD couldn’t handle it.
My bottom two shelves
My top two shelves
Stand back and admire your work
You did it! Take a step back and stare at all the hard work and effort you put into making your spice and baking cabinet look so beautiful. Pat yourself on the back. Do a little cheer. Drink a glass of wine. Do whatever your little heart desires to celebrate your success!
My Fabulous Spice and Baking Cabinet
I’m so in love with my cabinet now. It just looks so beautifully organized. I think I might even like it more than my pantry. Maybe that’s because my spice and baking cabinet organization was way less stressful…
Another item on my organizing to-do list checked off. What should I work on next? You tell me! Feel free to comment below.
Happy Organizing!
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