I enjoy cooking. I am no chef, by any means, but over the past 7-ish years that we have been married I have been slowly building up some skills and know-how. I also inherited a love of kitchen gadgets from my mother, and there is nothing more satisfying than a huge drawer full of alphabetized spices. :)

Sadly, I have never had a kitchen with a huge drawer! I’m not complaining about our cabinet space, because for the size and age of our house I have quite a bit of storage. However, I still didn’t have enough room for my herbs and spices. I had a bunch in a drawer, some stuck on the shelf in the cabinet, some stacked in bulk containers in the cabinets in the basement… not exactly handy. Not to mention that I never knew what I actually had without rummaging through all three places.

I saw a tip on America’s Test Kitchen (I truly love this show – way to go, PBS) a while back and gave it a try. I’ve been using it for 6 months or so and I must say I’m pleased.

I just took all of my spices and emptied them into labeled zip-lock bags. For the labels, I just cut adhesive address labels in half. If I had a label maker…

Oh, I’m sorry. I got lost thinking about all the things I could label.

Then I took all the zip-locks and put them in alphabetical order in a container. A lock-n-lock is my personal container of choice. I have an abundance of herbs and spices, so I used two; A-G and L-Z. Where are H, I, J, and K, you ask? I had nothing starting with those letters – and I can’t even think of a spice that starts with one of those letters!

Voila! Now all of my spices are in one place, easily accessible, alphabetized… and I found out that I had three containers of rubbed sage. Who knew?