New Spice Drawer

I’m not big on making New Year’s resolutions. This year however, I’ve made a made a commitment to tackle a couple of projects that I’ve been avoiding forever.  The first project has been rattling around in my head for over a year.

Last year, shortly before Christmas, I decided that I needed to organize my spices. I announced to my husband that I wanted clear -top, square ,tin containers for my spices like this :

His first question was … Are the airtight? I called a company that made these specialty containers and to my dismay the woman said they weren’t really airtight. Since I had my heart set on a certain look for my new spice drawer I wasn’t happy with this set back. On Christmas day my husband handed me a package containing 50 glass spice jars from Crate and Barrel. My daughter also handed me a package of prefilled spice containers. I thanked them both but my heart was still set on square tin containers. My poor husband headed back to the mall to return his 50 (very heavy) containers to Crate and Barrel.

Over the past year I’ve looked at tons of spice containers. I decided that I didn’t like the idea of the tin containers after all. I didn’t want to worry about whether or not they were “food grade” I didn’t want to worry about air -tightness, rusting or lead-contaminated products from China.


So after a year of scouring the chef stores , the Container Store and every imaginable internet site I announced to my husband that what I wanted were Libbey Vibe spice jars……the very same jars he had bought at Crate and Barrel a year ago. Since my husband is a saint and appreciates an occasional home cooked meal he headed off to the mall to buy 48 Libbey Vibe spice jars from Crate and Barrel. The jars cost $1.98. Since I didn’t have to pay for shipping, the cost was basically the same as ordering them online.

My spices are finally on the way to being organized.  The labels were made on the computer using address labels . All the jars had to be washed before filling which was a bit of a chore since you have  to remove the plastic seal before washing and make sure that they are completely dry before filling. Here are the before and after photos:

I absolutely love these jars! They're really too pretty to hide away.