The ABC's of Life: Spice Jar Redo + Organization

Back when I first joined Pinterest in ohhhh, 2011 (I think), one of the first projects I completed was redoing our spice organization. I thought it was such a clever and fun way to make your kitchen a little more Martha Stewart-y...yes she is an adjective as well ;) In this post I show you how I went from something I thought was going to be fun and wonderful (but took forever to create) to something that looks a million times better and took only a fraction of the time!

To start let me show you what my old spice jar project looked like...

Click on picture for more description on my Pinterest post.

I collected a ton of baby food jars (which wasn't too hard since I was doing this with a 8 month old in tow), cleaned them out, scrubbed all the wrappers and glue off, painted the lids with chalkboard paint (with a sponge brush because I couldn't find chalkboard spray paint then), and then filled the jars with spices and labeled with chalk.

I'm going to tell you, while I was SUPER excited when I first completed this project...it's not smart for the following reasons:

You have to meticulously make sure to keep the jar and lid together to keep them matched up.
Even when you do make sure to keep the right jar with the right lid, they still don't EVER seal all the way properly
Every time you open the lid, you wipe some of the chalk away
THIS TOOK ME WEEKS TO COMPLETE!
After 3 years of having this system, I've had to toss so many spices and dried herbs because they have gone bad from not being sealed properly.

There are probably more, but hopefully that is enough to stop you. Yes, this project really only costed me the cost of the chalk and paint, but it's not worth it.

Now let me show what does work and how beautiful it looks...

Isn't that beautiful!?!

I went back and forth over the last 6-7 months on what spice jars I wanted because I knew I wanted to keep in the drawers but I didn't know how I'd like everything to fit (i.e. standing straight up or laying flat). I was initially drawn to Ina Garten aka Barefoot Contessa's spice drawer and she uses THESE jars from Crate & Barrel. While these aren't terribly expensive (about $2 per jar), I still didn't know how I would like them in my long skinny drawers. (Ikea also has some jars but I didn't care for theirs.)

I was walking through World Market a few weeks ago and low and behold saw a wall full of glass spice jars! Not only were they all made really well, they also are only $.99 each! Less than a dollar per jar...not beatable even at Ikea!

In the end, with my wonderful mother-in-law's help, I chose the shorter fat jars because I liked their look the best and I am so glad I did. They fit beautifully in our drawers next to the stove.

Click picture to purchase a set of 6 for 5.94 on worldmarket.com!

When doing this you want to first make sure you wash and COMPLETELY dry the jars so no moisture gets to your spices. Because I bought 20 the first time around (I didn't count my spices beforehand and really needed like 34 total), I washed all the jars and lids in the top rack of the dishwasher, then let them air dry on a towel overnight. This was ok except the plastic ring around the lid to keep the jar sealed got a little water underneath it. I haven't noticed any moisture getting to the spices but if you do get these jars, I recommend going ahead and hand washing at least all the lids. I hand washed the next set I bought and didn't take any time at all. :)

While the jars were drying, I created the labels. I used these cute spice jar labels I found on Pinterest from Snippets of Design. She has two sheets for FREE download (SOOO sweet of her!) and left some blank in case you had other spices she didn't list! Click HERE to go to her post and download the labels!

She created her labels with a sticker machine and I couldn't find 1" Easy Peel Avery labels at the office supply store we went to so I got a packet of these full sheet labels (click here). Her files are downloaded as a PDF so to add the extra spice names I needed, I just clicked on the "Sign, add text..." button on the tool bar and added a text box inside the empty label circle. When I finished adding all the names, I printed a test copy onto a piece of plain paper, then printed them on the full sheet labels. Now it's time to get cutting!

My word of advice on this is to cut as close to the black circle edge as possible because even though the labels are "clear" they still have a little translucency to them so a jagged edge is noticeable, as you can see below.

Once dry, I carefully emptied the contents from the old jars into the new jars and placed the pre-cut labels on the jars (this is why you want to do the labels first). If you were doing these jars on a wall rack you could also place the labels on the front of the jars.

The last step is to organize your spices! I chose to keep ours in the drawers next to our stove because it's just easiest for us when cooking. I laid all of the spices on the counter and grouped them into Baking (i.e. cinnamon, nutmeg, etc), Dried Herbs, Individual Spices, and Spice Blends (i.e. Italian, Jamaican Jerk). Because our drawers are so long, I decided to keep our extra pot holders in the back and continue to use both drawers to hold the spices in the front so none of them got lost in the back of the drawer.

Then I wiped the drawers down with a clorox wipe and put the jars back in the drawers.

Ready for the Before and After?!?! Here you go!!

DUN DUN DUN....

Oh, it's Love!!!

I do still have a little extra cumin in one old McCormick jar and the cinnamon sticks will stay in their original McCormick jar because of their size. Overall though, I am over the moon happy with the way this project turned out!

Click on the pictures below to check out some other spice jar redos and organizational posts!