Note to self: This is the best way I’ve found to keep my spices in a uniformed organized fashion. I love this method and I’ve been using it for over 7 years now. Still going strong and the only thing that’s mind boggling is how many spices I’ve collected over the years. I have about 60 different spices ranging from simple salt and pepper to more interesting ones such as Turkish pul biber or Ethiopian berbere. My brother is a world traveler and whenever he asks my siblings and I what souvenirs we want from the countries he travels to I always say to grab some authentic spices from that region. I can’t wait to travel the world like him, he’s often an inspiration for me when it comes to food and traveling. I can’t wait for our trip to New Zealand! My birthday just passed in January and it was the BEST birthday present I could ever ask for! #Traveljabi here I come!

Anyways this post as well as several others are going to go into the subtitle of Homejabi. Mostly it’ll consist of Home DIY projects, home decor, where to find products I love, and organization tips. So my first post is something of a transition and merge between Foodjabi and Homejabi. It’s how I store my spices. I love using mason jars because of several reasons. One is that they have a wide mouth, so whether you’re using a small tsp or a whole tbsp it’s able to fit easily over the top and get how much ever you need. Second is that it’s specifically used to preserve and provide an airtight seal so there’s a less chance for the spices to go bad. And lastly the best part is that it’s totally customizable and super cute! You can leave it how it is or spray paint it to match your kitchen decor. The only con is that they do take up a lot of space, I ended up having to use 4 drawers and a portion of my cabinet to fit all my spices. But don’t worry! I found a solution to it and will blog another post about it! I freed up all that space and found a way to store not only my spices but canned food as well and all it needs is 6 inches of space between the fridge and the wall. Something that’s already there and not being used!

I use these 4 oz mason jars for a majority of my spices. They can fit into most drawers and are easily stackable. I use the 8oz ones for things like cinnamon sticks or bay leaves. (Usually spices that can’t fit into these small jelly jars)

The next thing is to grab your spray paint. You can customize it to your kitchen color scheme. The only thing I would recommend is to spray the middle black so the names of the spices pop with the white chalk ink pen. The colors I’m using are aqua and black since my kitchen color scheme is aqua, gray, white and black.

The last thing you’ll need are these chalkboard labels. I totally have to shoutout my friend Annum here for this idea! We have our weekly chats and she mentioned these and I thought it was such an ingenious idea! It saved me so much time and effort. These are reusable vinyl labels and instead of having to re-spray paint the black lid every time you change spices you can just use these and wipe it with a wet paper towel and re label it. They fit pretty well over the lid, I could’ve found some a little bigger but they work fine for me. And when finding a marker make sure the tip is pretty thin. I found this chalk ink pen and it works great. It’s a 1mm fine tip pen and is thin enough to write on these labels.

If you guys find vinyl stickers that are a little bigger totally let me know down in the comments! You can see here in the picture how they fit over the lids but I think bigger ones would be easier and give more room to write.

Things you’ll need: