Our spice cabinet has been infiltrating our house. As soon as you opened the front door, it smelled like I had just made Jungle curry for an entire army. I love that I can buy my spices in bulk from Whole Foods, but I didn't realize leaving them in the plastic baggies would cause such damage. Basically, the plastic baggies of cumin, curry, and ginger were allowing the smells to escape and permeate every porous surface in our house. I had put bowls of baking soda in the cabinet to hopefully absorb some of the smell, but it really made no difference. Candles and incense weren't making any difference, despite practically smoking out the whole kitchen.
The other day, I couldn't take it anymore. I had my in-laws coming over for Thanksgiving, I could smell the spices on my clothes when I was away from the house, and my husband said, "It smells weird in here". That was it. It was war.
I pulled out everything from the cabinet, sprayed it down with my vinegar/water/eucalyptus oil solution and wiped that sucker clean. It still smelled. Bad. The bottles themselves smelled. So then I wiped down all of the spice bottles. Still smelled.
Finally I put the pungent spices (curry, ginger, cumin, cumin seed) from their baggies into glass jelly jars.
They are upside down because I had read somewhere that putting spices upside down doesn't allow air to get in and therefore not allowing smells to escape (I don't know if it is true, but I was willing to do anything at this point). That seemed to help, but the cabinet has seemed to absorb all of the smells. How do I make a wood cabinet not smell? I know that baking soda is supposed to absorb smells, so I coated the cabinet with baking soda and let it sit.
I then sprayed it with vinegar and let the exploding action do its work. After cleaning up the baking soda and putting everything back into the cabinet... it didn't really smell anymore (well, just a little)! My husband even said when he came home "It smells better in here." YAY!
So, am I the only one who has had this happen? Please tell me no.
1 comment:
I've never heard of that happening, and I didn't know that smells could leak out of plastic bags. I've been in homes that smell deeply of curry, but I always assumed that was from the cooking, not the storing. At least you have all your spices in cute jars now!
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