The Talented Kitchen Spice Rack Keeps Your Cabinets Uncluttered

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By Abbie Kozolchyk

In the microscopic kitchen I share with my partner, cabinet space is so tight that our staples routinely plunge to an untimely end, simply because someone—let's say, hypothetically—nudges the coriander a nanometer too far to the left while attempting to extract the cumin. And while we both enjoy cooking, I’m the one who expanded our spice collection from merely encyclopedic to multi-volume-unabridged (i.e. five types of cardamom) during the depths of the pandemic, when culinary wanderlust became one of the few kinds I could satisfy.

The fella quickly became vexed by the burgeoning spice bazaar. Our collection went so many rows deep, he would lament, there was no telling where, for example, the chipotle might be, without emptying the whole cabinet. And while discord ensued, deep down, we both wanted the same thing: spices we could easily see and reach. Luckily, I found a solution: the aptly named Talented Kitchen Wall-Mount Spice Racks.

$36 at Amazon

I had initially looked for a free-standing spice rack with a tiny footprint. And while I tried numerous variations on the theme, they couldn't accommodate our full collection, or even the spices we keep in heavy rotation. Then I realized I’d been overlooking a 3- x 4-foot sliver of wall that runs from our kitchen counter to the ceiling.

I ordered two sets of Talented Kitchen wall-mount racks. Each box came with four floating stainless steel shelves, 24 airtight glass jars that can each hold 2 to 3 ounces of spices, a collapsible silicone funnel and 269 labels—some rectangular and see-through, others circular and opaque, many imprinted with spice names or numbers—that you can use to devise any system you want. Total capacity: 48 spices.

We’re not handy, so Mauro, a five-star handyman on Task Rabbit, mounted what quickly became the most functional art installation I’d ever experienced. Filling and labeling the jars was an almost meditative exercise in imposing order, however infinitesimal the scale, on an otherwise complex and imperfect world. And for anyone harboring even a glimmer of Konmari energy, as I clearly was (and still am), these kits are the ultimate enablers. At the risk of revealing how much time I spend alone with my organizing thoughts, I confess I alphabetized our collection, from Allspice to Za’atar, with the names on the lids and the expiration dates on the backs of the bottles.

Not everything fits, of course, but there's now room in the cabinet for the overage. And yes, I’ve given up some beautifully designed bottles in the switchover process. (New York Shuk's were the hardest to part with.) Yet their contents—whether pods, powders, sticks or leaves—look all the more striking in uniform, unadorned rows, a tiny oasis of order where everyone knows exactly where to find the chipotle.