One Of The Easiest Ways To Free Up Kitchen Cabinet Space Is To Make This Swap

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If you love cooking, we can guess what your kitchen cabinets look like. Well, at least the one in the corner that you've dedicated to all of your spices. Because no serious cook can get away with just salt and pepper, and it's likely you're drowning in bottles of paprika, cumin, cinnamon, herbes de Provence, Italian seasoning, you name it. With every new cooking experiment comes another spice, and soon enough, your cabinet is overflowing with containers. And the worst part? Every time you need one, you have to look through every container, dig through the jars, and reach the back of the cabinet. But not anymore, at least, not if you make a simple kitchen swap and start storing your spices in a drawer instead.

This one tiny change can instantly free up lots of space in your cabinet, which you can then use to store cooking appliances, pans, or dried goods. Using a drawer instead lets you see all your spices at a glance without having to dig through a dark cabinet. It's a clever setup that's too often overlooked, even though there are many ways to make it work for you.

What you do need for this is a free drawer, or at least a section of one. How much space you need really depends on how many spices you've got. Go through your collection, toss anything that's old and expired, and assess how much room you'll need. Often, drawers become catchalls for old, outdated stirring spoons and spatulas. Declutter your kitchen and get rid of any utensils and supplies you don't use before making the switch. And if you don't want to part with some of your unused utensils, there are creative ways to repurpose wooden spoons instead.

To organize your spice drawer, there are a few ways to go. The first question to ask is whether the drawer is tall enough to hold spice containers upright. If the answer is yes, you can store them as such in the drawer and pick them from above. So you can identify them at a glance, sort your spices with a label maker or a Sharpie, and place their names on the lids.

And if there's not enough height in the drawer to store the containers upright, store them flat. You can lie horizontally on their own, or get a drawer organizer instead. IKEA offers several spice racks that fit in its drawers, like the UPPDATERA models. These can bring some order to the chaos and prevent the containers from sliding around every time you open the drawer. Another option is something like the Suneerplay spice drawer organizer, which lets you store spice containers at an angle, making it even easier to see and grab individual bottles. If you're laying the spices flat, you can either rely on your ability to tell them apart by color and texture through the glass container, or add labels to the bottles again. Here, you'll want the labels on the container, not the lid, so you can easily identify the different spices when you're looking down into the drawer.

In any case, but especially if you're not using drawer inserts to organize the spices, consider adding a layer of drawer liner to the bottom of your drawer to protect it and prevent the glass containers from sliding around. This simple swap is a genius way to store your spices without cluttering your kitchen, so why not try it?