DIY Spice Rack 2.0

Spice jars have been my enemy for a while... but I think I have it under control! At long last!

I enjoy organization. A great deal. I love the satisfaction it gives me. Messy spice bottles and little plastic bags in the back of a cupboard does not give me satisfaction. So when I saw this photo on Pinterest months ago, I got a little excited. Mainly because it incorporated my love for mason jars in a very cool way.

Source: thekitchn.com via Raeanne on Pinterest

So I went to the hardware store and the craft store and got my supplies. And well that attempt turned into this...

So going on a tip from a reader, I headed over to Lee Valley and got some super duper magnets. They held the jars, but unless you were very gentle at pulling them off and putting them back on the wall, you'd end up with a minimum of six jars crashing onto the counter top. Not fun. Insert a few curse words here.

I decided to abandon this great Pinterest idea. Let's face it, DIY projects don't always work out as planned.

And yes, yes, I know those little spice jars with the magnets on the back exist already. But they are expensive. And not as original and pretty as my little mason jars.

Insert this. My handy-dandy drawing of what will become the new spice holding device -- thanks to some input from my handyman-dad and a coworker.

Off to the hardware store once again (thank goodness neither project was that expensive!) to get a pine board, some 'L' hooks and some drywall wall anchors. Roughly fifteen bucks later, I'm ready to get to work!

I started with a 1 x 6 piece of pine, when milled is actually 11/16" x 5 1/2". I needed about 10ft for my project, so I got one piece 6 ft long and had it cut down the length of the board at the store (for free, I might add), so I ended up with two 6 ft boards roughly 3/4" x 2 3/4". Perfect width for my little project.

I measured out all the lengths required (two 13 3/4" sides and four 20" shelves and got to work cutting them using my mitre box saw. Handy little thing to have around (thanks Dad!). And yes, I just got to work in the middle of my dining room! Hardwood floor + deluxe vacuum = easy saw dust clean up!

Once that was done, a good sanding was in order. I like to do this with a sponge sander. I find it easier to get a smooth finish.

I marked where all the shelves would go as well as where the screws would go. I then pre-drilled all the holes and followed that with screws to secure the structure. Forgot to take a photo at this stage, but this photo shows how I attached the screws via the sides.

Once it was all together, I applied a bit of wood filler where some of the boards met. In a few cases there was just a little tiny space where the boards didn't come completely together. This was easily fixed with a putty knife and wood filler.

Then one last sanding to smooth out where I applied the wood filler and all over for good measure. A quick cleaning and then I was off to paint! Using some left over paint from my kitchen walls (read: leftover paint costs $0). I applied 2 light coats with a sponge brush. I got great coverage after only one coat, seen here:

After the second coat of paint has dried for a day or so, it's ready to be mounted to the wall! Simply attached four of the "L" brackets to the rack.

Mark the wall where all the screws will go and insert wall anchors into the wall. Then attach the the spice rack! Ta Daaaa!

When I made my first spice rack with the magnets (version 1.0 and 1.1), I had made little labels for the jars. But I took this to the next level as well... I recently came across Martha Stewart's Avery line of products available at Staples and well fell in love... Here's how I re-labeled my spices. So pretty... You won't be able to see the labels when the jars are on the shelves, but in my organizing ways, I arranged them all alphabetically, so I have a idea based on that plus their colour/texture from the clear jar of what each jar contains. The label just confirms!

Hopefully (fingers and toes crossed), there won't be a Spice Rack 3.0 in my future.

Love!

(Apologies for blurry/grainy photos, been meaning to take new ones for a month now... but haven't done so, and now it's dark again and well if I take some now they'll turn out the same. This blog is finally going to see the light of day, blurry or not!)

"You made your own WHAT?"

I made my own body wash. Yes you heard me right. Is your next question "why"? Thought so. Well, I'll tell you why.

The stuff you do in the bathroom, including showering, brushing your teeth, putting on your makeup, washing your face can lead to putting an enormous amount of poison into your body each and everyday -- sometimes twice or more per day. To combat this, I'm trying to make small changes here and there to lessen my toxic load. In doing so, I consulted the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetics Database to check some of the products I use. And, well, I was somewhat shocked. What I thought was a more "natural" body wash, turned out to be just average for the money I was spending and had more bad things in it that I thought. I should have known better, but we all get fooled once in a while.

And so I began a search for a cleaner product. And by the magic of Pinterest, I found what I was looking for!

 

Source: proverbs2six.blogspot.com via Raeanne on Pinterest

I only needed three things: a "clean" bar of soap, vegetable glycerine and an essential oil (optional). I headed to Rainbow Natural Foods to find my loot and found it!

This soap, Kiss My Face's Pure Olive Oil Soap, gets a "0" from the Skin Deep database, because it's just that, pure olive oil. I also picked up some pure vegetable glycerine and some pure, organic tea tree oil.

The instructions are pretty simple: grate the soap, which made four cups of soap, and put it in 16 cups of water, over a low to medium heat and stir until all the soap melts. Add 4 tablespoons of the glycerine and at the end 20-30 drops of the essential oil.

This gave me four litres of body wash. I washed out my old body wash bottle to use in the shower and the rest got poured into large 1-litre mason jars (the colour is that green/yellow because again I used olive oil soap and therefore it's the colour of olive oil!)

Easy-peasy! And the verdict? It's a very different soap, but that's mostly because of my choice to use an oil-based soap. It's more liquid than a cream or a gel and like all soaps without sulfates, it won't lather that much. But that doesn't mean it doesn't feel lovely on my skin and makes me squeeky-clean.

So now the cost... well the soap was about $4, the vegetable glycerine was about $6 and the oil was $11. I used all the soap, half the glycerine and not much of the oil. I used to pay $10/litre. This one cost me about $9+tax for 4 litres. Yup, that's a bargain!