Spring Cleaning, part 1

I'm so out of touch. Have hardly been on Ravelry or surfed much, and there are so many great blogs I like to read! But, just maybe, I like to talk more than I like to read...?

I just spent the last 2 hours from midnight on with a queasy stomach, surfing ravelry and Lucy's blog which linked me on to another blog I love and sent me back to Ravelry in search of a mentioned pattern. Don't you just love stream of consciousness surfing?! Once in a while I just want to see where it takes me. I miss doing that.

The pattern that I found was this beret in lace--so gorgeous in Cindy's handspun! Oh, and if you like chickens, check out Lucy's pics--I love her snow chicken!

On the other hand, not surfing so much has left me a bit more time for knitting and spinning and reading. And other stuff...

I was inspired to recycle this weekend. Related to this post about the BPA residues from common household plastics, I decided to do a bit of spring cleaning.

I have been hoarding these lovely little glass jars

from Christmas gifts. Usually we get a cheese platter or two, and often these cute little jars of jelly are included. Here's a photo more to scale:

I love the jellies, have used them for a yummy jam tart each year. I also love the jars and have saved them in my cupboard until they were overflowing and falling out.

Faced with either using them or ditching them, I chose to re-organize my spice cabinet.

I went from this:




to this:

Still room for improvement: those 3 large containers at top center are plastic...I need more glass jars!

I used my Brother P-Touch Labeler to mark each container appropriately

I love this labeler, I got it on Martha Stewart's website several years ago.

Several of the glass jars have plastic lids, but I think that's a step up from plastic containers.

I really try to save any nice glass jar with a metal lid. Such a scavenger...

Here is the cache of plastic to be recycled after moving all contents into glass jars--

I even found some larger glass jars for holding things like cinnamon sticks, and bulk spices. It feels really good to organize this, and only took about an hour. (hey, I just noticed I have 2 containers of curry powder--duh!)

Another bonus: it made the house smell really great, transferring all those spices! DH thought I was baking up a storm =)