DIY Camping-friendly Spice Rack

After bragging about how organized I was with our camping supplies in this post last week, Tom and I realized that we had some work to do when it came to our great camping bins while we were on our trip on the weekend. We had most of the supplies we needed, but being the organizational nut that I am, the fact that the spice bottles rattled around in our bin bothered me. "There must be a better way!" I yelled. 

Tom reminded me that he had seen a great idea in a magazine over the winter. It was a spice box that looked like a daily pill container, except that instead of days of the week on the tops of the little compartments, it had spice names so that you could easily carry a small amount of each spice with you while camping. Genius! I wasn't going to go to the trouble to order this specific product for $25, so I made my own for about $5!

I went to our local Dollar Store and picked up these materials. The pill boxes, tape and labels were all $1.50 each. 

The first step was to use the labels to cover up the days of the week. I needed a blank space to write my own titles on each compartment. I bought labels that were the same width of the compartments, but had to cut them to size the other way. I eyeballed my measurement and realized that cutting them in thirds would be perfect. 

When that step was done, they looked like this. 

After that I had to decide which spices I would include. I looked in my spice cupboard and made a list of all the most versatile spices that might be handy while camping. S and P were a given as were seasoning salt and montreal steak spice- those are all handy to help flavour meats. Garlic and onion powder are also easy substitutes for the real things and the rest of them are spices that I use most in my cooking of easier recipes. Once I had made my choices, I wrote the titles on each little box. 

It now looked like this!

I wanted to make sure to put tape over each label as it would protect the pen from running at all if it were to get wet- something that's likely to happen while camping!

I put a piece of tape across the length of each box and then just cut in between the lids. It was easier than trying to cut a piece of tape to the right size of the individual lids. 

Lastly, it was time to fill them up! I put about 2 TBSP in each little box. That should last us a whole camping season and I won't have spice bottles cluttering up my beloved, organized camping box anymore!!

This is post is linking up with the following awesome LINKY parties!

- Beyond the Picket Fence
- The 36th Avenue
- Live, Laugh, Rowe
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