Cheap and almost too easy

As do-it-yourself projects go, a spice rack provides more gain for less effort and fewer dollars than almost anything around the house. In this case, the investment is about two hours’ work, including an hour for daydreaming, and less than $10 in materials.

First, there is a psychological hurdle to overcome. So many people have labored so hard to make the spice rack an imposing and overly complicated part of the kitchen that it’s hard to rethink the matter in its simplest terms. There are carousel racks. There is a yard-long $374 Martha Stewart spice wall. There are screw-in racks, hanging racks, slide-out racks and, alas, motorized racks. There are any number of special spice jars or spice labels that promise to help us find what we need when we need it in the bustle of a real-life kitchen.

Fine. If you go in for that kind of thing.

But be careful. Many of these racks break the basic rule: They place your spices in glass jars in the sunlight, which does nothing to keep the tarragon tasty. Others require that you repackage spices into special jars and then label them, as if you have scads of extra time that couldn’t be better spent doing something productive, such as cooking or daydreaming. Plenty offer space for a dozen spices, when you have three times as many.

The alternative begins with a drawer, the closer to the stove the better. Drawers have the advantage of being dark, which extends the life of costly spices. Alas, drawers have the disadvantage that they typically offer only 4 inches of space when a supermarket spice jar is 4 3/8 inches tall. The solution: wooden drawer dividers that will lift the heads of the spice jars, fitting them into the space and making them easier to read while reducing their habit of rattling around in a confused mess. Plus, you’ll be able to squeeze more spices into your drawer.

Tools: Tape measure, screwdriver, handsaw. A cordless drill is handy to drill pilot holes for screws, and almost all projects go more smoothly with help from clamps -- in this case a pair of deep-jawed C-clamps.

Materials (for a 4-inch-high drawer): Wood strips, 1/2-inch thick by 1 1/2 inches wide -- in pine, oak or whatever’s handy. You will need enough of the wood stripping for dividers at intervals of 3 1/2 inches from the front of the drawer to the back. Thus a standard drawer 21 inches deep has room for five dividers, leaving a nook at the back of the drawer for those off-size tubes of saffron, vanilla beans and galangal. You’ll also need wood screws, sandpaper and finish.

Construction: Measure the inside of the drawer. Cut the appropriate number of dividers. Sand. Clamp them, narrow side down, at intervals of 3 1/2 inches from the front of the drawer. Double-check that you have clearance to close the drawer when you lay the head of a spice jar onto the divider. Affix the dividers to the drawer (sides or bottom) with screws. Apply a clear finish. No need to carve fancy scallops to match the necks of the jars -- they will stay in place without them.