I figured this is where the cooks hang out, right? Well, those little crappy spice racks like my mom has with the grey dill weed and such are NOT ENOUGH. I have a whole cabinet shelf (one of those corner ones, even) pretty much full with little jars of spices and such, but I can’t ever find a damned thing in there except for the front row (you better hope it’s cinnamon, cumin, cayenne, ginger, maybe tumeric you’re looking for) because, of course, all the little jars are the same height. Behind the front several rows I have a little lazy Susan, which is even more useless. Is there any REAL way to store a bunch of delicious herbs and spices so that they’re easy to find? (Of course they also need to be cool and dark.) Any racks? Any, I dunno, systems?
Velcro + inside of cabinet door = Win!
I hung some wire shelves on the back of the pantry door. They look sort of like this, but bigger. It holds all my spices.
We organized ours in alphabetical order.
I believe it is tradition to recommend an Alton Brown solution in these threads. (oop. garygnu just did.)
However, here’s a cool DIY magnetic spice rack that actually looks as though it improved on Alton. I’d make one for myself if I wasn’t, you know, lazy.
Ooh, I WANT. I already have the label maker. 
I don’t have a nice big door like that that would be in the dark, though. If I put them on the back of the door of the cabinet they’re already on, I’d have to leave space for the shelves, plus I’d only be able to reach so high. I wonder if there’s a good canister that doesn’t have a clear lid, and then I could just put them on the back of a real door? (Of course, then there’s the heat of the stove. Grr.)
The first thing that popped in my mind was this really great, 3 tier, plastic and texturized rubber, EKCO Cabinet organizer that my Mom uses to organize her medications and keep them in easy reaching distance within her cupboard. However, I wasn’t able to find the exact product online, but here is something similar.
It also seems like these newexpand a drawer spice organizers seem to be current and hot- which is fine, but drawers always seem to be at a premium, and I don’t know many people who can spare a whole drawer for spices.
The drawer things seem so nice, but I have two drawers. TWO.
Here are 10 helpful domestic spice storage options.
Something that I have only seen as antiques, but back in the olden days didn’t people use little table/counter top miniature chester drawers as a spice locker? Basically it was a framed cabinet with many tiny drawers that the whole spices were stored in, usually there was an old fashioned coffee grinder nearby…
Ahh yes, something like this… Old Spice Drawers (That’s actually my nickname wit da ladies- Old Spice Drawers 
)
There are many ways in which I’m dissatisfied with my kitchen, but the spice rack is awesome. There’s one built into a cabinet next to the sink - open the cabinet door and you see a 4-level spice rack with little rails to keep the jars in place. Reach to the side of it like you’re going to open another cabinet door, and you swing it out on an extending hinge to show a rack on the other side, and two regular shelves behind the rack to store other items. If I had to pick another solution I’d probably be slapping up magnetic strips everywhere I could reach, and sticking little metal canisters to them.
A few years ago I got some of these little tins and some of this flexible magnetic strip which I then screwed to the back of the cabinet door.
Kind of like Alton’s velcro method, but I don’t have any velcro on the bottom of my canisters to get gunky.
magnetic strips glued to little Dollar Store tins + side of refrigerator.
I use one of these 16-jar carousels and refill my own. I keep the overflow in a plastic box in the cupboard, and I take it down when I need to hunt for something.
I have this stackable, under-cabinet mountable spice rack at my house. The spices are not hidden behind any doors, and auto-measure in 1/4 teaspoon increments (an opening allows for filling and removing larger quantities). My only complaint is that the plastic builds up a good deal of static and so spices tend to stick to it a bit and require wiping it down often.
Other than that, it’s really cool and I like it, especially because you can mount it under a cabinet so it doe snot use up counter space or in-cabinet space.
I did something similar myself. Only mine tucks away in a cupboard instead of being right in your face, cluttering up your cookspace.
I also have magnetic tins of kosher salt and black pepper stuck onto the metal stovetop vent hood, for easy reach.
I’m a pretty avid cook.
My sister is an actual gourmet chef, and she had me do something similar for her, except the spices are stuck to the side of her refrigerator, which is more convenient to her kitchen layout.
I absolutely love our spice setup. I had been taking up two full cabinets with all the bags and boxes of spices. I usually get them at our local Global Foods and they tend to come in big bags, which is great because you get lots of spice, but not so great because it takes up so much room. So we decided to put these little drawers on either side of our lazy susan to good use.
We have just utensils on the right-hand side, but in the drawers on the left-hand side, we have all our spices. We got dozens of bottles of equal size so we could fit two bottles side by side, then put all our spices in the bottles, storing the excess in a cool, dry place in the basement. Each of the top three drawers has about eight rows of two bottles, each with the top labeled with the spice contained inside. It’s my favorite part about our kitchen.
Ooh, that is so much better than the dry erase board (except that you can’t make notes on it) for a setup with no pantry door - you can just put the strips where there are no shelves on the inside of the cabinet! Or, hell, put 'em on the outside!
I have a drawer with a plastic liner thing, like a wave, that the jars lay down in. Rev-A-Shelf, Hafele, Knape & Vogt, Omega National Products Drawer Inserts and Organizers at Cabinet Accessories Unlimited
but I really like it.
I got some rectangular plastic baskets that are a little less than 3" tall. I put the names on labels on the tops of the jars. I have three of these stacked in my cupboard with the most used spices in the top basket.
We got something very simialr to that at Bed Bath & Beyond, but the tiers are barely big enough to hold the large jars from the grocery store, and entirely too small for holding the jars that we get at the restaurant supply.
Our problem is that we may not have a huge variety of spices, but some of the ones we use, we use a lot of, hence the industrial sizes.
A two-level lazy susan holds the itty-bitty jars of wierd stuff that we might use a pinch at a time three times a year. No problems seeing things - the small jars are around the outside, and the inside of the tray holds larger and less-used things like boxes of birthday candles and toothpicks.
The net result is one lazy susan holding things like caraway seeds, whole nutmegs and allspice berries, the bleacher section holding Old Bay and oregano, and the restaurant-sized jars of cinnamon, Italian herbs, lemon pepper, salt, bay leaves and so on are wedged in wherever they fit and aren’t apt to tip over.
I have two lazy susansin my spice cabinet.
