Slinging It Like Spinning the Wheel of Fortune

That's what I think every time I give my lazy Susan a spin.  I think of a Wheel of Fortune contestant grabbing a hold of that wheel and giving it a good heave-ho.

Not that I set it spinning hard enough to go around and around and around past the starting point several times.  My aim is to advance (quickly) to the exact spot of the item I wish to withdraw from that cabinet right then.  Despite how the pictures might look, it is pretty well organized and I know, in my head, the location of everything in there.  So, when I open the door and want the jar of paprika, for instance, I know exactly how much elbow grease I need to advance the rotating shelf right to the jar of paprika.  Or garlic powder.  Or liquid smoke.  Or baking soda. Or turmeric.  Or vanilla extract. Or. . . Or. . . Or. . .

 

My lazy Susan gets a ton of use.  It holds a ton of stuff, but all of it is used on a regular basis.  Depending on how quickly I go through a particular spice, it is in a small, not-so-small, or large container in the lazy Susan.  And all spice containers are grouped by size and sorted alphabetically in each size.  There's also several different flavors of vinegar, three or four different salts, and a couple types of cooking oil.  Plus food colorings, extracts, cookie decorating do-dads (jimmies, some people call them), etc.  Not to mention a couple types of dried peppers from the garden; some all ready ground and some still whole, each type in it's own baggie or jar.

What's in your lazy Susan?  Do you have one? Do you use it?   

Growing up, the lazy Susan in my Mom's kitchen was a sort of weird junk drawer,  It held nothing edible, just all kinds of miscellaneous things that seemed to have no use or other place to call home.  

My mother-in-law's lazy Susan is a graveyard for decades old spices and seasonings, as she doesn't like to cook and rarely cooks anything from scratch--or even seasons it on the rare occasion she does whip up something.  I think the contents of her lazy Susan are relics from when her eldest daughter was a teenager living at home and had to make meals for her siblings.

My kids, on the other hand, having grown up with a well stocked and anal retentively set up lazy Susan, all have quite diversely equipped, and well used (even if they're not as organized), lazy Susans in their homes.