Cupboard Make-over

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 Cleaning out my cupboards.  That chore that I must do from time to time.  I get aggravated with myself when I get low on a spice and buy more only to find out that I have 4 bottles of it in back stock.  Suffice it to say, I am going to be cooking with cumin a lot in the near future.  We will have a lot of Mexican meals coming out of my cocina.  

I have had cleaning the spice cabinet on my list of things to do for several weeks now, and today seemed like a good day.  I have read several books on organizing.  My issue is with the containers.  Professional organizers tend to use a lot of clear containers.  They all match, which is nice, but I have yet to find a place where I can buy them for less than $10 each.  If you multiply that by the number that I would need for home organization, it would amount to a small fortune.  So I have to stick with what I can find at the dollar store.  Unfortunately, with COVID so rampant right now, I am not going anywhere that I have to actually go into the store, so I am having to stick with what I have on hand, so excuse all of the wild colors, but that is what I have.

So here is the before picture:


The first thing that I did was to take everything out and throw away the disgusting stuff.


The racks on the bottom shelf I purchased from Amazon when we first moved into the house.  They have increased the space that I have and allow me to see everything.  The racks on the middle shelf I got from the dollar store.  I also use these in the cupboard where I keep mugs and glasses to increase storage space.  Before beginning this project I purchased some square glass spice jars to make things more uniform, especially since I buy a lot of my spices bulk.

So this is what I ended up with:




I had to organize according to what makes sense to me.  I have baking spices on the second shelf, and savory spices on the bottom shelf.  Fortunately, everyone in my family is tall, but I will admit that the top shelf is a little hard to reach.  I ended up with room to put some of the back stock behind some of the spices in the front.  I may use the back of the top shelf for more back stock.  Stay tuned for the pantry make-over.








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