Spice Rack Organization

Another brutally cold winter day means another day sheltered inside my home.  I don't mind this so much, because I know that once the weather warms up just a bit--and by warm I mean the 30s--we'll have more reasons to venture outside.

For now, I'm content to stay at home and spend the extra time I have here organizing and beautifying.  These words are pretty much synonymous for me, because an organized home is beautiful to me--it's neat, orderly, and calming to my spirit.  Not to mention, it also stirs up a sense of accomplishment that I did something!

Today, I'm sharing about how I organized my spice rack.  First, here's the "after" image:

It's still a work in progress, since I don't have enough of the smaller jars for all my spices.   The jars with the blue labels are my "work of art."  Below is the "before" image:

Some jars were large, some were small, some had quickly printed labels of my own, and some had permanent marker "labels."  I love uniformity, though, so here's what I did.

First, in Microsoft Word 2010, I created a new document, with three columns.  Then I created a chart with a pretty border, and used a light blue filler.  I will probably end up changing all these labels to plain white or another color, but I love blue so that's what I chose.  :)

The cells in the "chart" that are empty are there so that when I cut out each spice label, each label will have a complete border around.

The little spice jars are four-ounce jars, and I got them from Penzey's Spices (love that store!).  They sell the empty jars with blank labels (several sizes of jars, too), but these jars I bought with spices in them, and some came from my mom when she finished up a spice.

I lay out all the jars and labels, then I get out the packing tape.  Yep, that's what I use.

I lay the packing tape in strips, sticky side up, and place the labels word side down along each strip.  I used a piece of green paper so you could see the strips of tape.  Technically, what I do is pull out a strip of tape without cutting it off, and let it dangle (I hold the tape end and let the dispenser dangle down.  Then I put each label on, about three or four.  Then I rip off the end.  That way, I don't have "not enough" tape to get another label on.  Hope that makes sense!

Then it's just a matter of cutting between each label, and trimming the tape if it won't fit your jar.  I try to adhere the labels slightly higher than center, which looks prettier (photographer's "Rule of Thirds" and all!).  That was hard to do with these little jars, though, so I did my best.

That's it!  As I finish up spices, I'll soak off the labels (these Penzey's jars have easy-to-soak-off labels!) and replace them with my own.

Back to life,
Christine

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