EPIC FAIL: Magnetic Spice Storage

Those of you who have sweet magnetic spice storage systems like this

Image courtesy of Smarthome.com

or this

Image courtesy of cooking.com

I envy you. I tried and failed miserably at coming up with a cheap and easy way to organize my spices using the laws of magnetism. I mean almost anything would have been an improvement on this:

Oh but that’s not even half of it. I have so many spices that I got one of those countertop spinning ones.

I could never keep track of which spices were where, and I was constantly buying redundant jars. Plus, my original labels were all blurry from a few years of water splashing around them.

Yeah, I needed a change. I saw some articles on how to build your own magnetic storage system using an old cookie sheet, so I decided to give that a try. I bought some cute little bottles at Michaels (really intended to be wedding favor holders) along with some labels.

I went over all the labels with Mod Podge to prevent the runny mess that had happened before.

I thought it would be cool to have these hanging underneath the upper cabinets, within easy reach, so I decided to superglue a magnet to the top of the jar and attach the cookie sheet to the underside of the cabinet (where you might find recessed lighting, for instance). Well it turned out that the magnets weren’t strong enough, and since I’d already labeled all the jars and glued some magnets on, I couldn’t exactly return them. I thought about painting the cookie sheet with magnetic spray paint, but it’s expensive and I wasn’t sure it would work.  I wanted to  find a way to use the cute little jars, so I gave up on the magnet idea. I entertained the idea of hanging a shelf somewhere, but I didn’t want to cut into the tile on the backsplash. So that left two areas, the wall space above the kitchen command center and the wall next to the pantry.  But, the small wall by the command center is pretty much the first thing you see when you walk in the door.  And, it’d be kind of an odd place to store spices, since it’s not easily accessible while cooking.  I guess you don’t have to be a genius to figure out where the shelves ended up.

The wall by the pantry. It has been empty for about 6 months, so this has been a fresh change. I’ll also hang my DIY chalkboard and Kroken bar on this wall. There is plenty of room on the shelves for more of my most used spices (I plan to buy another pack of 18 jars), leaving the more obscure ones (hopefully) organized in the cabinet with all the oils/vinegars. I’m super excited to get this done, so stay tuned for completed pictures!