Should a Spice Rack Sit Above a Dishwasher's Steam?

No: a spice rack should not sit above a dishwasher's steam, meaning the strip of wall the door vent breathes onto at the end of a cycle. Dried herbs and spices are hygroscopic, so they pull moisture out of the air every time you lift a lid, and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension storage sheet for dried herbs and spices names the dishwasher first among the places to avoid.

Where it stops mattering is a different question, and the answer is not printed on anything. A rack at eye level over a counter run sits in a different climate from a cabinet door a hand's width from the vent slot, and the gap between them depends on your machine, the drying setting you use and how far the worktop overhangs the door. One wash cycle and a cheap hygrometer settle it.

Should a Spice Rack Sit Above a Dishwasher's Steam?

Not on the wall the vent breathes onto, and the rule is published rather than folklore. The Texas A&M AgriLife Extension sheet Storing Dried Herbs & Spices lists the places to avoid in a single line: above the dishwasher, the microwave, the stove, the refrigerator, or near a sink or heating vent. The same sheet carries a second line written for open shelving, which is the one most people skip: if you store spices on an open rack, put it somewhere away from heat, light and moisture.

The University of Maine Cooperative Extension bulletin on spices puts it mechanically: avoid placing spice containers near sources of steam or vapor, such as boiling pots or dishwashers, and store spices in a dry environment with humidity below 70%. Read that closely and the villain is the vapor, not the warmth. A jar sitting at a steady 72°F all year is fine. A jar getting a wash of saturated air twice a day is not, and it is the same reason South Dakota State University Extension tells you to hang herbs to dry away from the sink, stove or dishwasher. The Houseland product page for the wall mounted spice rack says the same thing in fewer words, naming the wall above a worktop, clear of the stove, as where the shelf belongs.

So the rule holds, but it is a rule about a plume, not about a postcode. Nobody publishes the radius, because the radius belongs to your machine and your cabinetry.

Where does a dishwasher actually put its steam?

Out of a vent at the top of the door, mostly in the last stretch of the cycle, and then wherever the geometry above it sends the plume. Whirlpool's service note on condensation on the kitchen counter gives the mechanism in one clause: warm, moisture-rich air meeting cooler surfaces. Two things make that plume worse than people expect.

• A sanitize cycle heats the final rinse to roughly 150°F, which is the figure GE Appliances quotes for meeting the NSF/ANSI 184 standard and its 99.999% reduction in bacteria. That is hotter than a hot tap, it can add up to 60 minutes to the run, and every degree of it ends up as vapor pressure looking for a way out.
• Heated dry does not remove the water, it evaporates it, so the moisture leaves as air rather than as drips. Whirlpool lists Heated Dry, Extended Dry, Open Door Dry and Fan Dry as the settings that cut residual moisture, and Open Door Dry pushes that air into the room by design.

The fix Whirlpool recommends tells you where the air goes. It sells a moisture barrier, part number 4396277, to shield the underside of the worktop, and asks you to wait a few minutes before cracking the door so the internal condensation settles first. Both target the same band of wall and cabinet directly above the door. That band is the one to keep clear.

How do you test whether that wall is too damp for spices?

Run one normal cycle with a hygrometer taped where the rack would go, and read it twice. A basic digital hygrometer costs less than a jar of saffron.

1. Tape the hygrometer to the wall at the exact height and offset the rack would occupy, not to the counter. Half a metre of height changes the reading, because the plume rises and spreads.
2. Run the cycle you actually run, on the drying setting you actually use. A quick eco wash with fan dry and a sanitize cycle with heated dry are not the same experiment.
3. Open the door the way you normally do. Fling it wide at the chime and the whole plume goes straight up the wall, which is why Whirlpool asks for a few minutes and then a crack.
4. Read the meter 10 minutes after the cycle ends and again an hour later, and write both numbers down. The peak tells you how bad it gets; the hour mark tells you whether the kitchen clears it or holds it.
5. Compare against the EPA's number. Its mold course asks for indoor relative humidity below 60 percent, ideally between 30 and 50 percent, and for wet surfaces to dry within 24 to 48 hours. A spot that spikes past 60 percent daily and does not fall back within the hour is not a spice wall.
6. Look as well as measure. A dark line on the underside of the counter lip or a swollen cabinet edge is the wall answering for free.

Whirlpool also asks you to keep household humidity in the 30 to 50 percent range and to run the extractor during and just after a cycle. If your reading fails and the extractor fixes it, you have a ventilation problem rather than a shelf problem, and the same damp is quietly working on every other wooden thing in the room, including bamboo jar lids.

What does the damp actually do to the spices?

It cakes them, dulls them, and in the worst case grows something on them. Ground spices clump because they are hygroscopic and the powder bridges as soon as it takes on water; the University of Maine bulletin ties moisture directly to mold growth, which is why it tells you to use a dry spoon and never to shake a jar over a steaming pot.

Flavor goes first and goes quietly. Penn State Extension's guide to storing staple ingredients asks for airtight containers in dry places away from sunlight and heat, and warns against warm temperatures and moisture together. Those shelf lives assume the storage was right in the first place:

The figures are the AgriLife sheet's own, and its test for a jar still worth keeping is sensory: strong aroma, potent taste, vibrant color. Hold a clumped jar of paprika next to a fresh one and the color tells you before your nose does. If yours are already sticking together, a dated label stops you buying the same jar twice next year.

Where should the rack go instead?

On a run of wall above a worktop, clear of both the stove and the dishwasher door, at a height you can reach without a stretch. Those two vapor sources sit at opposite ends of most kitchens, and the quiet stretch between them is usually the wall nobody has bothered to use. Three placements that work in practice:

• The wall between the end of the worktop and the corner, where nothing else fits and no appliance vents at it.
• The inside of a pantry door, which is dark, dry and closes on the jars.
• A narrow gap between two cupboards on the dry side of the kitchen, which is the one people forget because they are thinking about counter space rather than wall space.

Depth is what decides whether that gap works. The Houseland wall mounted spice rack sits 3.9 in (10 cm) deep on the Small size and 4.1 in (10.5 cm) on Medium and Large, so it stays close to the plaster instead of clipping a shoulder in a walkway. It comes in three widths, 11.4 in (29 cm), 13.8 in (35 cm) and 17.5 in (44.5 cm), which is a real constraint when the only dry wall you have is the 12 in strip beside the window. The rest of the kitchen and home range is built around the same problem of finding wall when the counter is full.

From the shop

Wall Mounted Spice Rack, Steel Wire Grid Shelf with Wood Base

Powder-coated steel wire frame on a solid natural-wood base, 3.9 to 4.1 in deep, in three widths: 11.4 in, 13.8 in and 17.5 in. Two screw-in hooks and two adhesive pads are both in the box, and it arrives as one piece with nothing to assemble.

View the wire spice rack — 3 sizes & current price

Open shelf or closed cabinet: which handles the steam better?

A closed cabinet loses, which surprises people. A sealed door in a steam plume traps the humid air against the jars and holds it there; an open shelf in the same spot at least dries out between cycles.

Neither of the first two columns is a good answer. Read them as a ranking of bad options if the vent wall is genuinely the only wall you have: a plume that passes beats a plume that is captured.

The one case for the closed cupboard is bulk stock in unopened, factory-sealed packets, with no threads for damp air to creep through.

What I'd do

Tape a hygrometer where the rack would go, run one sanitize cycle, and read it at 10 minutes and at an hour. If the peak clears 60 percent and has not dropped back inside the hour, that wall is out, and no container will save it.

Then hang the rack somewhere dull: the wall between the worktop and the corner, or the inside of a pantry door. The Houseland shelf ships with two screw-in hooks and two adhesive pads, and the product page is blunt about which to use: screws where it will carry a row of full glass jars or where the wall is textured, adhesive only on smooth, clean, dry paint or tile. A damp wall is where adhesive lets go, which is one more reason to move off the vent before you stick anything to anything.

Last, buy smaller jars of whatever you use twice a year. The argument gets shorter when the leafy herbs are gone in eight months rather than sitting out their full 1 to 3 years.

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