SpiceStack – Why Didn’t I Think of This?

As a teen, I was convinced my mother was the weirdest parent on the planet. My girlfriends and I would try to outdo each other with stories of our mothers’ embarrassing behaviour, like how they’d shop in curlers or forced us to wear bell bottoms after 1972. I always won the argument with, “Oh ya? Well, my mom alphabetizes her spices.”

Now that I’m old enough to have seen bell bottoms do a full fashion cycle yet again, I understand that Mom isn’t weird. Au contraire — she’s an efficiency expert. Not until I bought my own groceries did I realize that spices are displayed in alphabetical order.

Having come to my senses on the A-Z issue, I’m faced with my usual storage dilemma: Small kitchen; lots of stuff.

In an effort to find efficient storage, I’ve checked out every spice holder in the country. Few are large enough to house my inventory. Sure, I could buy five or six wall-mounted units, but available wall space is devoted to my pottery mug collection. And only a fool would get between a girl and her pottery. Double decker lazy Susans are good in theory, but I inevitably spin the thing too fast and send bottles flying to the back of the cupboard. A few rescue missions requiring a complete unloading of a not-so-lazy Susan prompted me to rethink my stance on pottery.

Fortunately, I found SpiceStack. It fits neatly into a standard cupboard and holds 27 large bottles (or up to 54, if you go small). Best of all, the drawers pull out and then fold down for easy retrieval.

I must confess, when it first arrived I was so impressed I tried it with my collection of gift jams, my jars of belly dance beads and even a few handyman items like nuts, bolts, screws and nails.

In the end, it was just too practical for my seldom used craftroom or under-utilized workshop. The design is so simple yet ingenious it makes me wonder why someone didn’t come up with it sooner.

Or maybe they did. And maybe that spice storing genius was somebody’s weird mother, and it just took a couple of decades for the idea to sink in.