The Spice of Life - Pantry Redo

The saying goes "Variety is the spice of life". Yesterday, for me, the opposite was true. Uniformity was definitely the spice of life! Let me explain. I love to cook. Just about anything. I love taking random ingredients and combining them in a way that makes them taste amazing. With all of this cooking that I do I have accumulated a lot of ingredients. And by this I mean a lot of spices. Our current pantry is big enough to hold them all, but there were so many of them and they were all different sizes and in different packaging. The OCD in me did not appreciate this. Let me show you what I was dealing with:

Yes, they are on a few different levels, but I couldn't see anything. All the red tops looked the same, I had to pick up each bottle to see what it was and I could never find the little short bottles of stuff. I knew something had to change. Every time I opened my pantry I cringed a little. So I started looking for a solution. I came across this picture on Pinterest:

Oh the excitement I felt! Finally, a DIY way to get uniform spice containers! I clicked on the link and began reading, and shortly after, my heart sank a little. The beautiful bottles that the person had used were from Starbucks Frappuccino drinks. I don't drink coffee, at all. Add to that, the case of 4 drinks costs $6 each. That's $1.25 per bottle (not to mention I would just have to throw the contents down the drain). I did some quick math, I needed about 60 bottles, maybe a little more. That comes to......$75!! I couldn't justify that. I started thinking about how there must be someone around me that buys these drinks and throws the beautiful bottles away. So I posted an ad on Craigslist "I will pay you $0.50 for every bottle, that is like getting $2 off every pack you buy!" I thought I was so clever! Surely someone would love to have this deal! I patted myself on the back and began waiting for the emails to flood in fighting over who gets my $0.50 per bottle! One month later......there was no flooding......there wasn't even a trickle. No one responded to my ad!

Disappointed, but not discouraged, I moved on to phase 2. Surely there are other, attractive bottles on the internet, right? I started searching, I started reading forums and blog posts. I wore out the buttons on my calculator adding together cost plus shipping divided by the number of bottles. Then I came across a conversation on this random forum. Someone suggested using Mason Jars but in the 4 oz jelly size. WHAT?! Mason Jars come in a 4 oz jelly size?! Just like every other self respecting pinner out there, I LOVE Mason Jars! I started looking around online and sure enough, they exist, and at Walmart!! The price was perfect too, only $8 for a 12 pack! That came to $0.67 per bottle. Not quite as cheap as the $0.50 that I wanted to pay, but not too far off. The fact that I could go to Walmart that day and buy them, thus fulfilling my need for instant gratification, was even better! Within the hour I was at Walmart and buying five cases of these:

I also grabbed a RedBox movie to watch while I was making the individual little labels for the top of each jar. It was "We Bought a Zoo" if you must know. No, I do not recommend it. Ok, back on track. I brought them home and did an inventory of my spices. I needed to know what labels to make. Turns out I had 4 bottles of Cumin, 3 bottles of Cinnamon, and 2 bottles of too many other things to name. Time to consolidate! I made the labels, applied them to the top of the jars using ModPodge, and added my spices. As I threw away plastic bottles I could see my vision coming to life, and it was beautiful! In the end, this is what I had:

Holy cuteness! I am so excited! I can see all my spices (through the clear jar and also by the labeled lid). They are uniform, and they are stackable if necessary. I think they look great. The two different colors don't mean anything, I just wanted to have more than one color. This was a really easy project and I'm so glad I finally did it! I used 58 of the 60 jars, so I have two left over just in case I need some.