DIY

BUDGET SPICE CABINET ORGANIZATION

I’m ready to share our spice cabinet organization project with you!  At first I titled the blog post a $10 spice cabinet organization, then I changed it to $20, then I just took the dollar amount because we actually had most of the supplies except for a few small pieces of wood.  So I really can’t tell you exactly what it costs, but it was definitely budget friendly.

Alright… let me say these aren’t good photos.  The skies have been grey out, which means bad indoor lighting and I just took phone photos.  I tried to brighten them but editing can’t fix bad photos.  I almost deleted the post because of the photo quality but decided it’s probably of some value, so it is what it is.

So back to our spice cabinet, due to low storage space in our kitchen and our overwhelming collection of spices, this cabinet has been a train wreck for a long time.  Ok, if you’re familiar with my blog you know we like nice things, we decorate, we travel… yada yada yada, but we don’t blow money either.  We’re firm believers in balance and I find it really fun doing things on a budget, and then I get to justify nice shoes – haha.

So we do thrifty things like save a lot of jars for example.  Haley hates jelly but Ashley usually eats a PBJ sandwich every day.  We buy the Cascadian Farm organic jelly and these jars have always been exceptionally slender and cute.  I also try to buy spices on sale or in the bulk section to save as much money as possible.

I love to bake and cook, but spices are so incredibly expensive!  It kills me to pay $6-$8 for a small spice jar I’ll quickly go through.  One trick I’ve learned, besides buy generic, is buy bagged spices, they’re usually just past the jars near the Mexican spices.  That will definitely save you a few bucks, but my favorite is buying from the bulk jars at Sprouts.  If you don’t have a Sprouts Grocery just check around your grocery stores in bulk foods and see if you can find them.

I also hit a spice sale at Sprouts recently and I was able to replenish about 16 jars of our spices for under $10.  Not kidding.. and these are double or triple the sizes of those little grocery store spice jars.

I had enough of this crazy cabinet, and had accumulated a lot of extra jelly jars, I also had these avery oval labels already on hand, so I decided to toss my hand written dirty labels and clean out all the jars.  I tossed big jars and unnecessary items like taco seasoning… I don’t have the space and I can blend that as I need it.

But it didn’t solve the problem that due to my large spice collection I couldn’t find what I needed.  I would have to pull everything out just to look for stuff.  It was a huge hassle.

Brian being an engineer decided to build a stair step out of inexpensive wood so I could see and easily find everything.  He built 2 stair step risers under 2 of the shelves.  Then all I did was caulk and paint.

He was careful to measure the height so that I would have enough room to easily lift and pull out the back row of jars.  In fact that’s why the second and third shelves are so high.

Luckily I’m tall so this isn’t an issue for me, but still I can’t reach some of the ones at the top.  What I’ve done to solve this is to put my most commonly used spices towards the bottom, and I keep a small step stool in the kitchen so I can reach the high stuff when needed.  It’s a vast improvement.

I ended up putting clear labels over the white oval ones because our last labels became so dirty.  It looked prettier without the clear labels, but having things stay clean is also nice.

Another crazy thing about this narrow cabinet is the door used to open on the other side and I was so frustrated Brian reversed it.  Seriously was that a cabinet mistake or what??  Why have a narrow cabinet door open towards the refrigerator wall?

I hope you found some DIY, thrifty, organization inspo from this!  Anyone curious about the cabinet color it’s Benjamin Moore White Chocolate.  If you have any favorite ways you like to recycle and save money leave it in the comments!

Laura

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