This $17 Organizer Finally Wrangled All of My Spices (and I Have a *Lot* of Spices)

I have some real drawer issues. My apartment has only four (count them, four!) kitchen drawers, plus a weird little one that will only hold a small box of aluminum foil and maybe some straws. It’s infuriating. One goes to utensils, another to random tools, and one more for potholders and trivets. That leaves me with one weird, wide drawer for spices. And, boy, as a food writer and recipe developer, do I have a lot of spices!

Until recently, I’ve been shoving my spice bottles in my drawer in rough alphabetical order and hoping for the best. They roll around a bit, and it’s not the most aesthetically appealing thing to look at when you open up the drawer. After making do for a few years, I decided to finally upgrade my spice situation with the YouCopia Spice Drawer Liner.

The drawer liner comes in a roll, allowing you to cut it to fit the dimensions of your specific drawers. The thin, lightweight foam material is easy to cut and has slightly raised edges and grooves to help spice jars stay put. The roll comes with a handy paper measuring tape that you can mark based on your drawer depth. They recommend cutting one piece and checking that it fits before proceeding. I heartily agree — you want the liner to run from the very front to the very back of the drawer in order to avoid any shifting around. If you accidentally cut the first one too long or short, you can adjust and will only have wasted a little bit of liner as opposed to the whole roll.

After clearing out my drawer, I cut my liner per the instructions and fitted it into the drawer. The piece bulged upwards just slightly, but the instructions reassured me that it would just take a moment for the foam to relax and lie flat after the jars are placed on top (and it did!). I cut the rest of the necessary strips and arranged my spices on top.

After trying out the spice drawer organizer for a few days, I have thoughts (most of them good!). Here are the pros: My spices stayed tidy and nicely organized, even as I yanked open and shut the drawer time after time. This is a huge deal and made grabbing spice jars a much more pleasant experience. I love that the liner is customizable, and you can cut it to fit any drawer depth. Plus, it’s inexpensive. One box (containing ten feet) costs just $17.

The cons were minimal and will depend on a person’s kitchen. The only real issue I had is that a single roll had enough for almost my entire drawer. The roll ran out just a few inches shy of finishing the last row. I didn’t want to buy another roll just for that little bit, so that space is organizer-less. But it’s not a huge deal and you might not even encounter this, depending on the size and shape of your drawer.

All in all, if you have even a single drawer to dedicate to spices, the YouCopia Spice Drawer Liner is an inexpensive solution to wrangle all of your little bottles.

How do you organize your spices? Tell us in the comments below.