The spice rack of our dreams

Sometimes we take way too much time overthinking a project. But then other times, all that weighing and intellectualizing and Talmudic discussion of all aspects and possibilities pays off.

We're on an organizing kick -- for a few halcyon weekends, we don't have any commitments, so now is probably the only time until, say, next October that we can work on these little projects, like reorganizing my dance video collection, or purchasing, finishing and filling pine shelves with 800 CDs.

Or building the spice rack that my Omnivore and I have been discussing for, lo, these many years.

When we first moved into this apartment, he brought his spices. I brought my spices. At some point we had three large cans of paprika and four bottles of Canadian mustard. We had bags of coriander. We had more cardamom than you could shake a pod at. And we had no place to put all of these goodies. There were mismatched tins and jars and bottles in our pantry, underneath our table, in the windowsill. And all the disorganization predictably led to us making ridiculous pronouncements like, "Sweetie, I think we need to pick up a can of paprika. We must be out of it, since I can't find any here."

Conventional spice racks just didn't seem to fit the bill. Lots of jars on a lazy susan? We have no cabinet space. Spice rack hanging on the wall? We have no wall space. Cute plastic stand that holds twelve jars of spice? Um, we have 31 spices and no counter space.

We liked the magnetic tins that so many places are selling now, but they never give you enough of them in the prepackaged sets, and the steel boards accompanying them were always too small. It's expensive to get those tins anyway, but it's also hard to find just the right size.

Fortunately Will, over at Leland Tea, came to our rescue. Will sells his own wonderful blends of tea (check out his Pear Caramel--mmmmmm) in tins slightly larger than what we needed, but he kindly special ordered smaller 2-inch tins for us.

We got a 2 foot square steel board from Pottery Barn, a roll of magnetic tape from Brownie's Hardware, some labels courtesy of the old Brother P-Touch and we're in business. Oh, how I love our new spice rack...

Now on to organizing my desk. Ack.