After years of having some things in a drawer and others on top of the microwave and at least one jar being batted around the floor by the cat…I now have 4 (FOUR!) spice jar carousels (thanks, Santa!). All will be equally accessible.
Clearly, alphabetical is the preferred order in general. Of this, I will brook no argument.
But then things get complicated. Here are the issues I’ve identified thus far:
pepper, black; pepper, red; and pepper, white all belong in P, of this there can be no argument, right? But what about cayenne pepper? What about New Mexican Chilis? What about Lemon Pepper?!
What do I do with the blends? Italian Seasoning, Cajun Seasoning, Old Bay, etc. (maybe even Lemon Pepper). Do I grant them their own carousel, or integrate them with the singles?
I group 'em by type, and by what I’m likely to be using together.
Chili powders and cumin together, for doing Mexican stuff.
Cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg etc. together, for doing gingerbread.
Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme for chicken soup.
I have one metal rack devoted almost entirely to Indian cooking and alphabetized (25-26 different spices). Then there’s a magnetic pad adhesed to the back of the cabinet door that has somewhat alphabetized spice cans stuck to it (although I keep the more used ones lower down). Then there are a bunch of miscellaneous things on some staggered height cupboard inserts (dried thyme, cinnamon, nutmeg, etc), and to the side of that are larger jars with chili powder blends, smoked paprikas, my can of Spanish red saffron, and cumin. Next shelf up are extracts and dried chilis. Top shelf has a plastic bin with a bunch of bags of Penzeys spices that I’m trying to use up, but they seem to multiply, much like the loaves and fishes.
So the rack and the magnetic things are in alpha, but the rest is by memory.
(3 small shelves in the pantry, a small rack in the kitchen)
No matter how I arrange them I always end up with chaos pretty quickly. Some are in larger jars. If I pull something out from the back, I just shove it back in front! It’s a lot of jars to look through to see if I have something, to be sure. But I keep an alphabetized list of what I have, so I can look there first and not waste time searching.
I don’t. It’s completely random. This is an anomaly for me; everything has a specific place, arranged in a specific manner, but for whatever reason, I don’t care to organize the spices in any particular way, so they go on the spice shelves in whatever way they fit.
I have a tube rack a lot like this http://s3.amazonaws.com/wootsaleimages/Alexander_30_Tube_Spice_RackhijDetail.jpg
That I store on it’s side in the cupboard. I just know where they all go, because they have names on the lid, but some of the ones that came with it aren’t in my top thirty used spices, and I filled with something else, so I just have to remember where each one goes and what’s in it.
Top row is mostly spicy stuff and seeds; peppers, chillis,mustard seeds, fennel, cumin.
Second row is mostly herbs.
Third is non chili powder mixes and random, like bay leaf and juniper berries.
If I need something that isn’t in the top thirty(or to refill a tube), then it’s an archeological expedition through a piled jumble of bottles, boxes, and cans.
I have a little stair-step thingie like this, altho my spices are in containers of various sizes and shapes. I keep the ones I use most often in the front on the right. There’s no rhyme or reason, but I know where to find what I need most of the time.
I can’t be bothered to get all alphabetical or use uniform containers. Frankly, I consider it a win if I pull a bottle out and the ones behind it don’t fall out.
First I organize them functionally into primarily cooking vs. primarily baking spices and have a rack for each. Baking spices are things like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, allspice; cocoa; vanilla & other flavor extracts; and food color also goes here. Cooking spices are everything you probably wouldn’t put in a cupcake.
Cooking spices are further subdivided by mixes vs. single spice. Then they’re organized by the size of container with smaller ones and larger ones on different shelves, because the shelves are different heights. And now we’re done.
My two spice racks are each only a single jar deep so I can always see everything that I have at a glance - growing up my parents subscribed to the “shove it all in a cupboard at random and no one can see what’s in the back” method and it made me mental.
Well, way back I had an asshole roomie that would use my stuff by sticking spoons in to scoop out, then stirring, then going and scooping out more … so I picked up 2 of the 24 bottle spice racks, painted the spice labels on using the latin names for the spices, and then ordering them in alphabetical order by what the english name would be if it were painted on instead. Since Pam wouldn’t be able to either memorize all the proper linean names, she would try sniffing to figure out what stuff was. She gave up and started buying her own spices after that. Never bothered changing, my husband has the brains to be able to memorize the linean names =)
I have 3 shelves for spices and seasonings. The bottom shelf is for stuff I might use, the shelves above that are stuff I’m not likely to use or stuff I should throw away but figure I could use if I ran out of something fresher. The spices I use frequently are out on the counter, salt and pepper grinders, Old Bay, coriander, mustard, cayenne and paprika, and others randomly. Clearly it’s not much of a system.
Mine too, except they’re on a shelf in a lower cabinet that pulls out so I don’t have to totally dig around. One trick you can do is to write the names on top of them (not that I do that) so you’re not pulling each one out to see what it is (which is what I do).
Not being a pack-rat or a fan of clutter, if I have some obscure blend that hasn’t been used in years, I’ll usually toss it if I can’t think of something to do with it. “Fiesta citrus spicy steak seasoning”…I can put that in my mashed potatoes. “Latin black pepper allspice & turmeric pork seasoning” WTF did I buy that for, I don’t even like allspice…garbage.
Straight seasonings, I’ll usually keep forever just so I don’t have to buy them again when I need them someday. I know I’ve got some cardamom (whole) seeds around here somewhere. Bought them for a recipe, they’re gross and I don’t like them and they’re pushed back in a corner of the pantry where seasonings don’t even belong, but they’re not taking up any space and I don’t want to spend $7 on them again if someone asks me to make whatever it was that I bought them for the first time (even though if I was making something with cardamom in it, I’d probably just leave it out).
I used to use those, stuck to the fridge. They turned out to be less convenient than I’d hoped. Now my jarred spices live in their jars, and the other ones are in zip-top bags inside of zip-top bags. Spices I mix myself would not fit into those canisters, so I keep them in glass jars.
