DIY Spice Rack Makeover

One of my all-time favorite wedding gifts was our spice rack. Since it was the first either of us had lived on our own {except for the few months before our wedding that Niall spent settling into the apartment}, I was going to have to start from scratch in building a collection. Generally speaking, spices aren't cheap -thank the Lord for discount groceries and bulk shops!

About a year into marriage I set up a system of cutely labeled baby food jars with painted lids to house the spices not contained on the rack. Essentially I had the equivalent of two spice racks/systems. That's a bit much for this wannabe minimalist.

Add to the fact that over 7 years later, all of the containers had gotten kind of grimy and nasty- a combination of cooking splashes and dust creating a sticky layer over them. I shudder just typing about it. Shame on this not-so-fabulous housekeeper.

At the beginning of this year I was decluttering in my kitchen and decided that enough was enough. I tossed all of the spices I never use- which was half of them. Then I washed all of the containers thoroughly, repainted the tops, and labeled them with a paint pen.

Because I am super on top of things- ha- I dabbled off and on in this project for about two weeks. Now that it's complete, I feel very accomplished and love the look of it!

If your spice rack could use a revamp and face lift, here's what I did:

1. Remove labels. I bought paints for this project before carefully thinking it through- oops. I thought the labels were stamped on, requiring a paint over. Turns out they were just stickers! I could have just taken off the labels, cleaned them, and written a new label. But I had already purchased paint and had my heart set on black lids by this point.

2. Wash the containers. I went the lazy route here. If I was emptying the jar entirely to make room for a more used spice, I washed the whole jar inside and out with hot soapy water. If the contents were going to stay the same, I simply screwed the lid on extra tight and scrubbed the outside carefully, quickly hand drying it. Before taking the labels off for the wash, I wrote the spice name on the bottom in permanent marker. This worked like a charm!

3. Paint the lids. I used an acrylic paint- bad idea, because it can easily wash or chip off. If I could do it all over, I'd just spray paint them.

4. Write a new label. I bought a paint pen for just a few bucks at Wal-Mart, and for the most part loved how it worked. They have oodles of colors if you want to go fancier than I did. I did run into a bit of trouble on several of the labels when it dumped a profuse amount of paint out, but I did my best to work with it and in the end was satisfied as a whole. Alternately, you could just print labels on a label maker or your printer.

Paint pen leaks- oops.

I'm not the craftiest of crafters, and my execution wasn't great. But I love that a) all of my spices are in one handy location, b) my spice rack is super clean now, and c) a little piece of my kitchen got a makeover. I've been enjoying looking at it and using it every day.