Magnets are useful all over the home, particularly in the kitchen. For example, magnetic knife racks and magnetic cupboard and drawer closures are not uncommon. They can even be used to keep oven doors firmly shut and of course, every fridge has a magnetic flexible rubber seal.
Another use of magnets in the kitchen is for creating a magnetic spice rack to keep all those spices neatly organised and accessible.
We were delighted to receive these pictures from Mike in County Durham who had created this wonderful example of a magnetic spice rack.
You can clearly see that Mike has used a thin steel, painted sheet as the backing board for his spice rack. Mike has then glued a small neodymium magnet to the inside of each spice jar lid so that when the lids are placed on the jars they are held in a shear position against the steel board. When you are done with the spices, simply pop the lid back on and reattach the jar to the steel board.
The exact magnets used by Mike are 15mm diameter x 2mm thick N52 neodymium disc magnets and these are able to hold a sufficient weight of 0.45kg in a shear position, plenty for most spice jars.
If, like Yasuko, you are planning to stick magnets on the underside of your jars you can use a slightly weaker magnet to achieve the same effect. In the below photos Yasuko has used a 15mm diameter x 2mm thick N35 neodymium magnet with a 1.8kg pull. Here, you can see that the magnet has been stuck to the underside of the jars using superglue and a ring of thin foam sheet has also been added to make the underside flush.
We think this is a really great way to organise and display your spices and to help take the stress out of cooking!