I put labels on the lids of my spices and store them upright in drawers.

Rubbermaid makes a very nice pulldown spice rack. I had these in my last house. They were great for those of us who are vertically challenged.

I bought mine at Target online. They are sold elsewhere online, too.

Look at doing at least a 9” spice pullout in a base cabinet somewhere. They are great for the big sizes of oils and garlic powder, etc.

I like that pull down spice rack idea, since you've got all the same sizes.....I have a variety of sizes based on how much I buy of different spices, and I don't often use the original jars. That leaves me with a cacophony of spices in a cupboard, but it suits me well and I can easily get to whatever I'm looking for.

I decided when I moved everything back in to my newly design kitchen that I would simply have a drawer full of my (dry) measuring items. As you said, everything is loose, because when they were all nested they drove me crazy. I weeded out the ones I didn't like, and bought repeats of the ones I did (especially the red square measuring cups). I find everything easy to find and grab in the drawer. The larger (over 1 cup) wet measuring cups are stored elsewhere, because of the size difference.

we have a lower pullout drawer for spices and a narrow cabinet right above it for salts/ rest of spices/baking soda/etc. I find both incredibly useful -we had half of them on our countertop for years before, and I really wanted them to be a) inside b) easily reached and found. We have many..so when we put in the kitchen I planned for storing it best way space allowed.

measuring tools/everything baking related-deep drawer right under the stove

I have a spice rack built onto the inside door of a cupboard near the stove. I can fit most spices in the rack, the rest I have on the shelves in the same cupboard, along with larger things like box of salt, spice grinder, etc. I have my measuring cups in the bottom shelf of an upper cabinet in my baking area. I reduced myself to one really nice set of measuring cups which has 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4, 1 I also have glass pyrex liquid measuring cups (3 sizes) in the same cupboard. Measuring spoons I have in a drawer with other baking utensils.

One set of nested stainless steel measuring cups, 1/8 to 2 cups; nested set of the glass pyrex (1,2,4,8 cups) and nested stainless set of measuring spoons - one set the regular sizes, other set the combo sizes. At the time of purchase, specifically looked for nesting versions to save space.

I store them upright in jars in a drawer — to bring some order to the mishmash of shapes and sizes of jars that had accumulated, I ordered 60 empty jars from Penzeys and consolidated everything into them, and then printed labels to put on the top of thhe jars so spices were easy to find when I opened the drawer. To keep them lined up, I drilled holes slightly larger than each bottle in a of plywood and made a drawer insert out of that

@ Matt E. - that's awesome. You win the prize for organization!

Yes, that is amazing!

Matt E - amazing! Wow!

stillptitpat - mine are in a lazy Susan and I think I want to keep them there even in my new kitchen. I have tons and tons of spices and salts and peppers.

I am a bit of a neat freak, and hate drawers of jumbled stuff. I really like that little wooden shelf I picked at TJMaxx one day. Want to get more of them.

I have a spice holder in my drawer next to the stove.

I love it as I can see everything very easily. It's a Rev-a-Shelf unit that can be cut to fit the drawer. I had it in my old kitchen and that drawer was a bit narrower but chose to re-use it. Sometimes, I keep my measuring spoons in this drawer. I have a 2nd set in a drawer with other baking supplies on the other side of the kitchen. My liquid measuring cup is in a drawer near the spice drawer, and my dry measuring cups are hung above the canisters for flour/sugar. I would not want all this in the same place, but that's me - it's a very individual thing.

So many great ideas!

Matt’s idea doesn’t work for me because I get new spices a couple times a year still. You would think with ~175, I would have enough, or maybe all there are, but I still hit recipe dead-ends and have to order another. The pain of moving every single jar farther along in the alphabet....

Matt has given me serious spice envy and brought out all my ODC fantasies. I have had a couple of homechef59’s pull-down spice rack and they are fabulous. One was on a shelf so high, I had to tie a 10” piece of kitchen string to it to pull it down, but it worked smoothly.

My spices, most of them, lie on their backs in the two thin drawers under my china cabinet, which sits on the counter near my prep area.

My new spice racks. I have one in each cabinet on either side of the hood. Oils will go on the shelves. Measuring cups, spoons, etc go into a divided drawer.

I started like Matt E, buying my own bottles, fancy labeling. What did not work was refilling bottles, so I decided that keep spices in their original bottles, even if it may not look as pretty. The only two things that I do stick by is writing opening date on bottle and keeping them alphabetized.

Linelle - that gave me a chuckle. Did you know that the very same assistant can make sure you do not leave any chicken left on the bones? Or, put another way, the assistant can tell you if your kids forgot to actually put the bones in the garbage?

Waiting, waiting

Accessibility to measuring stuff is high on my list of making a kitchen a joy. When we reno'd our current kitchen I set up this drawer in the island:

My assistant (and her twin brother) have trained me not to leave any food of any kind unattended on the counter or anywhere for that matter. That includes a plastic bag of carrots which causes above assistant to go nuts. I also never feed them human food (prepared for humans) or they'd never give me a moment's peace.

It looks like I will have one 36" shallow drawer and one 30" shallow drawer. One will obv have to be for silverware, and I'd like to put cooking utensils in there too, if there is room. Maybe that will be the place for measuring items as well (aside from wet cups). I am leaning toward spices in a shallow cabinet on the wall. At the moment, I have 58 regularly sized jars, and maybe 10 or 15 larger containers. While I like the spice drawer, I don't know if I'd want to use up a whole shallow drawer on them. I'll have to think on that. Maybe if I stored them upright (but then idk if they'd fit in the shallow drawer). I do like cpartist's door racks, with oils & such in the cabinet.

Thanks, all!

Linelle, can I borrow your sous chef this Thanksgiving?

Matt E, please tell me you make and sell those inserts on Etsy. Seeing that makes the type A in me want to clap.

Why doesn’t refilling them work for you, bossyvossy? Curious because I usually buy 8-16 oz containers of bulk spice and deep freeze the rest! Obviously, I refill. ;)

DF who has many spices has a short, shallow shelf like this under upper cabs.

Stillpitpat, I have a similar drawer configuration: one shallow 36" drawer on one side of my range, and another 36" shallow drawer on the other side of the range. The left side is in the prep zone, and I dedicated the entire drawer to our 60+ spice jars, stored at an angle using the Rev-a-shelf insert that Anglophilia showed above. The right drawer has all our silverware on one side and cooking/serving utensils on the other.

Left spice drawer (sorry for crummy phone pic quality):

Right utensil drawer (I got Lee Valley divider holders but haven't installed them yet, so it's a jumble):

The only reason this works is because I also have a narrow drawer stack on the far edge of the prep zone. These drawers are only 13" wide - narrower enough that surely people warned me against them, but they were all I could fit and they serve an important purpose. They are allocated, from top to bottom, to knives, prep utensils (measuring stuff, whisks, etc.), larger prep tools (spiralizer, mandoline, etc.), and kitchen towels. If I didn't have that narrow drawer stack I would have had to find a different spice storage option and probably would have done the upper cabinet door storage.

Narrow drawers of prep stuff (it's hard to see, but I have at least a dozen knives in that top drawer thanks to efficient knife-block design):

I have the non-glass measuring cups and spoon sets all in one drawer. Multiple sets so I can cook without having to stop and wash a spoon. Pyrex ones are with the mixing bowls.

The flour jar has a 1-cup BLACK measuring cup in it, because our most common recipe calls for 1 cup and black can't get lost in the flour.

Spices ... I sigh over the loss of my huge cupboard that held them all in Phoenix. They are in a drawer (seldom used ones, mostly Indian) or a cupboard.

stillpitpat - I love your measuring cup storage on the doors-the right place for the right tool. I am a big fan of door storage when possible. We have deeper uppers, which makes it easier to store larger items without compromising space.

DH made these spice holders from me, which are on 2 flanking doors for normal spices (alphabetized of course!, and then again above the baking area.

I'd like to follow this. My problem is we use spices in such bulk when we cook that we store them in pint sized mason jars.