{containing the spices}

Let me start this post with a couple of confessions:  I'm in love with Pinterest...and I'm in love with all things Melissa and Doug.

Pinterest has these beautiful pins of these spices that are all contained in the exact same jars that are magnetically attached to your cabinet door.  They're lined up perfectly and I'm certain that anal perfectionists some people enjoy using them.  

Enter Jackie.  I'm practical.  I live in the real world where I would have to store all of that extra-spice-that-wouldn't-fit-into-the-jar-hanging-on-the-magnet-board somewhere else.  That would take up 2 spaces in my kitchen.  No thank you.

I kept thinking that I wanted something fabulous to contain all of my lovely spices so that I could take them all down at once, and so that I didn't have to take a gazillion small ones out to find the paprika that was hiding in the back.  IKEA, probably for the first time ever, failed me.  I couldn't find anything that was the right size for my cabinet.  

Now enter Melissa and Doug.  Melissa and Doug toys are often packaged in fun little wooden crates and boxes and such.  I never know what to do with these, but it seems like such a waste to toss them.  So, they sit in my game cabinet until I can repurpose them.

Spices+ Melissa and Doug containers=cabinet sanity {thank you Melissa and Doug: Shape, Model, and Mold}: 

Those are all of my main spices that I use on a pretty much daily/weekly basis.  They get prime real estate in my baking cabinet.

Next up, we have the spices that I use once per year {thank you Melissa and Doug: Lacing Beads}:

These guys get the top shelf of the baking cabinet.  Though I do have to stand on my tip-toes, they all come down at once and I don't drop a single one!

Love it.

This has been one of the best organizational improvements to my kitchen in the past two years.  I keep all of my larger items {salt, baking soda, baking powder, cocoa} sitting next to these on the shelf.  I used to have to get my big step stool and dig through my cabinet until I found the spice I wanted.  No more! Now, they come down altogether and go up altogether.  I never drop a single one.

Don't have any Melissa and Doug containers?  Find a kid, buy them a gift, and steal their container...and consider it a gift to yourself. :)