…:: Alex Smirnov ::…

From our kitchen, that is. Over the years we have accumulated quite a collection of spices. Starting with asafoetida (or hing, if you insist), through berbere and cardamom pods (both green and black) to vanilla and yellow mustard – it was all in there, stuffed several rows deep in a cabinet. An unfortunate  consequence of this arrangement is that every time we needed a bottle of spice that was not in the first row we had to rummage through everything and inadvertently drop some of them on the counter.

And thus we said enough! and decided to build a simple spice rack.  Something simple and cheap, yet sturdy and decently looking. We were planning for 4 shelves, roughly spaced at 4.5, 4.5, 6 and 6″. We decided on this particular arrangement after taking all spice bottles out of the cabinet and laying them out on the kitchen table. Spice bottles some in different sizes and this seemed like the only viable solution to resolve the shleving size dilemma. This is what the blueprint looked like:

Spice rack blueprint

Coincidentally,  we were visiting Andi’s parents the next weekend and decided to built it there. Realistically though, it was the only option as we not only have no space to build anything in our apartment, we also have virtually no tools. Andi’s dad was kind to lend us his tools as well as his helping hand. We hit one of the local stores and bought a 13ft length of 1/2″ x 1 3/4 ” finished wood and some 1 5/8 phillips head screws.  This was also an excellent opportunity to test the new timer I got for my camera and dabble a bit into time-lapse photography. I mounted my camera on a tripod and set the timer to take a picture every 7 seconds. All in all, 390 images were taken and merged into a movie. Unfortunately, the sky became cloudy for a while and made the images a bit dark, but I still think it is a decent first try.

On the whole, it was a very enjoyable and injury-free process. Too bad we do not need any more shelves in the near future. As expected, the new rack introduced an unparalleled degree of order into our spice collection. Not only we don’t  have to rummage anymore, we can also instantly see whether we are running low on any spices. Such as cumin. Disaster averted. Judge for yourself:

A look into our kitchen

A close-up look at the spice rack. We ARE out of cumin!

A peek into our cabinet where all the spices used to be. The decrease in entropy is remarkable.