How to Organize a Spice Cabinet

Whenever friends come over for dinner, the area of the kitchen that gets the most oohs and ahhs is the spice cabinet. And to continue on my kitchen organization tour (I shared how I organize under the kitchen sink a couple weeks back) I thought it would be fun to share this little corner of our kitchen today. Because if you do any cooking at all, you’re sure to have a ton of spices!

I’m lucky enough to have tons of storage in our kitchen. The kitchen in our rental actually has loads more storage than the tiny galley kitchen in our home in Florida. When we moved in, I decided to make my spices and other staple cooking ingredients like oils easily accessible and dedicated one cabinet to housing them.

The bottom shelf of the cabinet features my collection of dried spices that yes, are in fact alphabetized. I thank my mom for this idea, since her spiced cabinet has always been organized in a similar fashion. While I’ve tried many types of spice jars over the years, I’ve used these Ball herb jars the longest (probably 6+ years). They feature a glass jar with a wide-mouth shaker lid and work really well for spices. My favorite thing about them is that they are wider than they are tall so it’s easily to see the ones behind. The expanding 3 level shelf, that I’ve also had for years, is one of my favorite kitchen organizational items. It’s key to making all those spice jars visible and accessible!

Another favorite item is this stainless steel lazy susan. I use it to house oils, vinegars, and hot sauces. So much easier than stacking them side by side. To the left I keep the salt and pepper grinders and ghee, which has become a new pantry favorite of mine.

Next to that, I have use a drawer organizer to hold all the extracts used for baking. I spy some homemade vanilla extract in there too. Then I use a plastic tote to hold spice mixes, bonito soup stock, bouillons and other miscellaneous spices, salts and sugars.

The top shelf holds all the items that I use less frequently such as bulk items and extra spices. I found these stackable shelves at Home Goods, but here’s a similar one. And since I’m making use of the tall cabinets, I bought this 2-tier step stool, which I keep in the laundry area just a few feet from the kitchen to make reaching these items easy.

How do you organize your spice cabinet? Please share your favorite organization tips and items in the comments.