Spice Storage Ideas to Help You Organize Your RV Kitchen
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Ashley Mann spent three years living full time in a 38-foot, 5th-wheel RV with her husband Josiah and their cat, Kitty. Her favorite thing about RV life is the challenge of finding the perfect way to organize a space, and she loves seeing all the creative and clever ways people come up with to customize their RVs.
Save storage space in your cabinets and keep your spices, herbs, and seasonings organized and handy with one of these nifty ideas–perfect for a small apartment, tiny home, camper, or motorhome!
Door clips
A set of spice clips like these can be mounted on the inside of a cabinet door. If adhesion is a problem, you might try attaching them with removable heavy duty mounting tape and use plastic containers, like the ones pictured below, instead of heavier glass containers.
Wall mounted spice shelves
A classic, inexpensive option if you have wall space.
This style could maybe be hung with a few adhesive hooks if you don't want to drill holes in the walls.
Or, you could try an adhesive rack like this one:
These brilliant spice shelves were made from wire cooling racks purchased 2 for $1 at Dollar Tree. Read the instructions for making them here.
Spice racks & caddies
The owner of this RV (who, incidentally, makes beautiful Baltic amber jewelry!) mounted a this spice rack to an interior pantry wall. A stainless steel version is available as well.
This spice rack comes in different widths and doesn't require the purchase of any special spice containers. Perhaps it could be mounted under a cabinet with shelf brackets if space inside the cabinet was limited?
Here's an interesting spice caddy I saw an RV owner recommend in a Facebook discussion. You can stack more than one, and the dials allow you to measure out the correct amount without using a measuring spoon.
Under cabinets
Speaking of mounting spices under cabinets, one RV owner added a piano hinge and hook-and-eye latch to a wooden box and mounted it under a cabinet. You could make something similar with an unfinished wooden box and latch. I might also add a chain support (or ribbon) to help it not fall open too far.
A similar idea in this how-to video by Nifty on BuzzFeed uses an art supply box.
That weird space in your RV kitchen
A lot of RVs have a “hole” like this that is often wasted space, but one RV owner found it to be the perfect spot for spices. A matching color tension rod can be placed across the front to help hold them in place during travel.
Magnetic spice containers
Magnetic spice containers can be stuck to a refrigerator, or to a baking sheet mounted on a wall or to the bottom of a cabinet. You could even spray paint an old stained baking sheet a pretty color.
One RV owner mounted a baking sheet spice rack on a kitchen wall using removable Command strips; Velcro or my favorite acrylic mounting tape would also probably work well for this purpose. If you don't have space on the wall, maybe you could stick it to the bottom of a cabinet instead.
RV owner Lisa Long simply sticks her magnetic spice containers on the metal range hood over her stove:
If you don't want to purchase fancy magnetic spice containers (which can get pricey for someone like me who has a LOT of spices), you can just glue magnets to the tops of spice containers you already have. Empty baby food jars would also work great for this (although you might want to use stronger magnets since glass is heavier). In my experience, this type of glue works the best for gluing the magnets to non-porous surfaces like metal and glass.
Another magnetic option is to have a piece of stainless steel cut and mounted on the wall. If you do this, make sure the stainless steel will hold a magnet–not all will. Here is what I purchased for my stainless steel backsplash at my old house, pictured below. For the containers, I used paint storage cups from Hobby Lobby, but I can't recommend them as they were not made of food-grade plastic, and the one containing powdered cloves actually deteriorated over time due to the clove oil. Scary!
Some additional comments about my old spice wall backsplash: I loved the convenience of having my spices right next to my stove, but they did lose their color and flavor over time from being exposed to direct sunlight (across from a window in clear containers) and right next to a heat source. Also, the containers often got splattered with grease.
Here is how I currently have my spices stored in my RV. The containers themselves are not magnetic; the wall is. You can read about how I made it in my post called “How I Made the Ultimate Magnetic Spice Wall.”
If you need more ideas for organizing your kitchen, you might enjoy reading my blog post about fruit and root vegetable storage ideas.
