Spice Drawer Organization

Let me show you how, in our new kitchen, I went about my spice drawer organization with pretty jars and labels and a bit of sorting.

I love cooking, especially in my new Ikea kitchen.

And being organized makes life so much easier and more beautiful. Like organizing my front porch.

When I organized things into the cabinets and drawers, I simply piled all the spices into one drawer. Unfortunately, with them standing upright I couldn’t really see what they were and had to lift them up all the time to see the label.

Therefore, I needed an organization for my spices!

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Taking everything out

Obviously, for my spice drawer organization I needed to take everything out of the drawer to see what’s there. As with many organization projects, I find that I can get rid of stuff. Putting the spice jars on the counter allowed me to see what’s there.

I basically sorted the spices into two sections: those to keep and those to get rid of. Over the years, I had accumulated some spices that I am no longer using so I threw those out.

Also, there are spices that I have the fresh version of in my garden so I won’t need those anymore.

Old spices that have lost all their aroma (I guess I wasn’t using them …) didn’t make the cut, either.

The spice jars

There are a lot of different ways and containers to store spices. I love those squarish glass jars for two reasons:

For one, they save more space than the round ones

And two, through the glass I can see what’s in there and how much.

Over time, I had already filled most of my spices in these square jars. So I only had to upgrade a few spices from a round jar to a square one.

Using the same type of spice jar also makes everything look more uniform and organized rather than having a lot of mix and match. At least, that is my opinion!

Labels and labeling

Since the jars are standing upright in my drawer and I am looking down on them, I need to see what they are from the lid.

This is where those spice labels come in handy that I had found online. 340 pre-printed round spice labels and 56 blank labels is perfect for my purpose! It didn’t hurt that I really liked the font! The round labels for the lids look like chalk labels which I have for other bottles in my kitchen, too.

As you’ll see, these round labels almost cover the lids so you won’t really notice that some lids are silver and some are black.

Then I spent the time to affix the corresponding label to the lids of my spice jars. I only had about two spices that didn’t have a pre-printed label. I can just use a marker and write it on the label myself!

Organizing the spices

What good is it to have all the spices placed into the drawer, however nice that looks, if you can’t find them? Well, when I am cooking I need to find things quick. So I like to organize things by alphabet.

That is what I did next. And boy are there a lot of spices that start with the letter “C”! In the end, it took me less than 10 minutes to have them all sorted. Now, I can easily and quickly find any spice!

It is such a dream to open this drawer, see everything neatly organized, and be able to find what I need!

Location of my spice drawer in my kitchen

Ideally, I would have liked to have my spice drawer right next to my stove – where I need it the most.

However, when we designed our kitchen we had to work with a lot of parameters and givens. I do have drawers to the right and left of my stove but they house other items. While my spice drawer had to move a bit further away, I love how big it is (24″ wide and 15″ deep) and how easily accessible it is. And we love the soft -close feature of all of our drawers and cabinet doors.

I’d love to hear all your comments and questions about my spice drawer organization below!

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