Friends, what can I say. This has been quite a year, and the past week has just been a string of remembering horrid details of March 2020. Since I would rather not wallow, how about we talk storage?
You may or may not know that I am a Virgo (13 September - lucky 13!), which means I’m all about tidiness and cleanliness and organization, especially in my home. The problem with my home is that it’s a New York City apartment, which means it’s not exactly spacious. Don’t get me wrong, there is room for us and a bit of our stuff, but there’s no attic, basement, garage, playroom, office, shed, not even a linen closet or actual pantry. This all means that we are fairly organized and only hold onto stuff that we expect we shall need in the near to middling future.
So, once the pandemic got under way and we got used to being trapped in our cage because no one knew what was safe, I started tidying even more than I already had. If you know me from way back (2017, which seems like just yesterday and also a million years ago), you know that I had a moth problem which required a very thorough cleaning of my “studio” space (also the laundry room, second loo, and in 2020 the overflow pantry and an additional classroom space) and organization of the remaining supplies. IKEA came to the rescue there, along with Ziploc (yarns need to be stored airtight in my house): bags of yarn and bins to put them in with said bins going into a bookcase. The trick with IKEA stuff is to buy a little more than you need of any smallish items, so that you have a matching set, since they discontinue colors and shapes regularly to keep you coming back for more. Buyer, be prepared (and be grateful that everything is flat-packed).
With the yarn and samples organized and orders to stay inside with two weeks of supplies at all times, I finally got around to dealing with my kitchen cabinets. Said cabinets were fine when I could run out any time to grab something from the bodega, but once we had to keep more on hand, we had to get more organized. Plus I had bought lots of flour and a half-pound bag of yeast when in Vermont on 1 March 2020 (I was like some sort of supplies Hoover driving down from VT to NYC, gathering up baking supplies, TP, paper towels, and yarn for whatever was about to happen, since we already had an inkling that there would be a change a-comin’). And this is what I really came to say: Weck jars are the bomb.
For the uninitiated Weck is a company that makes glass storage and canning jars. They come in a variety of shapes and sizes from teeny weeny adorable things that would store, like, three nutmegs to substantial jars to hold *almost* a 5lb bag of flour or rice. They all come with glass lids, rubber gaskets, and two clips each to keep the jars closed, but Weck also sells different lids (rubber ones rather like Tupperware, wood ones with a gasket that forms an airtight seal, and cork lids). I will say that the downside to the way Weck presents their wares is that I had to wrestle with the presented volume and dimension measurements, since the jars aren’t presented in relation to one another.
After figuring out, more or less, what I needed to store (multiple kinds of flour, rice, granola, some snack items), I scribbled down the different jar dimensions and volumes, along with the lids that matched to figure out what would work best for my needs and my space (shelf spacing is only so tall in some cabinets). I ended up focusing on Tulip jars and stuck with my Bonne Maman jam jars for smaller needs (I can’t tell you how those gingham lids make me smile). I also wanted some of the fancy wooden lids, so that little table in the photo above indicates which ones go with which size.
Ordering directly from Weck took a bit longer for order fulfillment than it might have ordering from Amazon or such, where the jars seem to cost more, but I would rather the money went to this small company making tidy jars. Everything arrived well-packed in a big box via FedEx, and the lag from order to delivery made it feel a little like a surprise gift to myself, especially since I wasn’t exactly sure what the sizes I ordered would be like IRL.
I ended up with the Tulip combo pack, which went for granola, dried cranberries, and a bag of pink peppercorns that a friend had too much of, and a set of the largest Tulip jars (2.5 liters each) for rice, bread flour, and whole wheat flour. Now I smile every time I open my cabinets to make bread (see above) or have breakfast, and I’m pondering my next Weck order. Maybe it’s time to decant and tidy my spices into matching wee containers…
Almost forgot: some kind of label maker helps with organizing. I found a new-fangled version of an old Dymo (the kind that embosses letters onto thick plastic tape) on Amazon and bought rolls of clear tape for it. It’s called MoTEX, some people don’t like it, but I’ve been pleased. This is the clear tape, which gives you white letters on a transparent background. I’ve also used the tapes to label some plastic pump bottles from Muji in the bathroom (seemingly not in their online shop right now or I would give you a link).
If you made it this far in my nattering, you’re a dear. Next time there will be a new pattern - I’ve get a handful in the final stages.
Happy knitting and organizing!
xxoo, Kathleen
P.S. I don’t get anything for those links. Just want to share my finds with those who might enjoy them.
Picture me in bed beside sleeping husband, grooming cat and snoring 120 pound lab, rotating my iPhone and trying to stop it from rotating the photos again so they are never not sideways. I gave up somewhere in the middle of catching your drift and making myself nauseous! Maybe for the end of the pandemic I will re-organize my pantry again, but with Weck! It was one of my first pandemic success stories and long overdue at the time, but we are back to empty nesters with occasional weekend guests and our vegetarian as well as our “Cali-mex-nouvelle cuisine” chef have moved out, so its space allocation is no longer aligned with its demographics....
I am NOT a Virgo, but I love organizing, as my family could definitely tell you, so this was great! :)