Everybody Needs a Hobby

By the third or fourth day of break, I was bored. Charles was bored. Iain was bored. We were all looking for stuff to do.

And I was also annoyed with my spice cabinet. I got a lot of wonderful gifts this year, including boxes with spices from all over the world (a box from Turkey! ZOMG!). But every time I reached into the cabinet: disaster. It was a mess.

Then, on Christmas, I received a beautiful box with Vanilla, Orange, Lemon, and Almond extracts. There was just no place for them. But I looked at the box from Penzey's, and I noticed how nice and muscular the cardboard looked. Very manly, really. I wonder...if I cut that box up, could I make a little faux-spice rack? Hmm...

So as you can see, I used the top and bottom of the box essentially as frames, and stacked the spice containers on them. While Penzey's sells the best spices ever, their containers don't fit into one another. You can't easily stack them in your cabinet. But now, thanks to the box, I can use much more of the height, and have an easier time seeing my stuff and reaching for what I want.


Of course, that was the bottom shelf. The rest of the cabinet remains a disaster:

Yes, I have a lot of salt. I bought so much in part because Iain's school asked us to make Play-Do. My play-do was really bad, though, so I doubt they'll ask me again.

Oh, did I mention the whiskey bottle?

SLC recycles glass, but not with home pickup. Functionally, that means they don't recycle glass. Charles finished his bottle of Black Bush last week. Put those two things together and what you get is: a sad waste of a nice bottle.

Meanwhile, I'd been transferring my spices into jars (saved from jam and the like). I buy some things in bulk from Penzey's, and they come in big plastic bags. But big plastic bags don't fit well into rectangular cabinets. So I decanted things like Adobo seasoning and Za'atar into jars. But I have a pepper fetish. So there was too much for a jar.

Hmm...a nice big bottle. With a cork. Excellent. Glass: re-used, which is as good as recycled. Peppercorns: happily ensconced in a bottle. Cabinet: tidier than it was.

Yay!

Of course, now I need another project.