How to Minimize Your Spice Cabinet

Did you notice that the title of this post didn’t include the word “organize”? There is a very good reason for this, and that is because I don’t want to help you to organize an endless amount of herbs and spices in your cabinet! Rather, I would like to share the ease and freedom that comes from paring your spice inventory down to what you really need and use ! Let’s take a look at how to minimize your spice cabinet!

I love to buy and use herbs and spices to use in all of my cooking!

However, the problem seems to be that after a year or two of neglecting my spice cabinet, it gets to be overloaded and disorganized!

So much so, that I can’t find anything.

Time to minimize the kitchen stuff!

When my spice cabinet gets to this point, it doesn’t need to be organized.

It needs to be gutted!

So, first things first, before we minimize the spice cabinet, let’s completely empty and clean this spice cabinet!

How to Purge Your Kitchen Spice Cabinet

Take everything out and place it all on your counter. Then, wipe out your empty spice cabinet thoroughly! Doesn’t that feel great??

Oh my goodness, this is embarrassing!

Yes, even more!

What a hot mess of a cabinet! There really isn’t a good way to organize this many spices, I simply have too many.

The solution to this disaster is to streamline my herbs and spices to what I use on a regular basis.

Like everyone else, over the years I have purchased spices for “one-time recipes”.

You know what happens…the spice just sits there because you never make that recipe again!

Or you make it once or twice, but the point remains that you will never use up the entire spice.

How to Simplify and Minimize Your Spice Cabinet

Then there’s the duplicates.

Ugh, I can’t believe I’m showing you this. I know I’m not the only one, though.

When you don’t have order, you can’t expect to know what’s in there. You’re almost guaranteed to buy duplicates!

Let’s get this cabinet under control!

But first things first.

I’m emptying out all of the expired bottles and putting the contents into my compost pile.

Then I’ll wash up the bottles and try to find a use for them…a few will probably wind up in the recycle bin.

The most important part of this project is to determine what spices and flavors I truly need to have on hand. Everyone’s list is going to look a little different, but this is what I came up for my kitchen.