@cR0w @wdormann @da_667

I live in a shoebox, and I take pride in my minimalism to fit in the space I have, including keeping my spices down to a reasonable minimum. As it turns out, you can do a lot with a little.

Salt and pepper are table stakes, and needed for nearly every cuisine.

I grow my own rosemary and thyme in a tiny bed, plus a basil plant that sits in a south-facing window. That plus oregano (which is oddly better dried) gets me most of what I need for Italian and French cuisine.

That dried oregano plus cumin and cayenne gets me most of Mexican cuisine.

The cumin and cayenne gets me Indian cuisine when I add garam masala and turmeric. Yes, you can go infinitely more complex than this, but it'll cover most of your bases for common dishes.

I'm struggling with Chinese cuisine because of all the variety of fermented sauces and variety of regional cuisines, but five star spice and a szechuan pepper mill go a long way.

The other thing I find is that intentionally keeping my spice cabinet minimized means I'm not throwing away mostly-unused spice containers every couple years. Unless you're feeding an army using recipes from every possible cuisine in the world, it's nearly impossible to use them all before they get stale.