Dear wow: putting the rice in with the salt will keep the salt in the bottom part drier, but the trouble is at the holes in the cap, where traces of salt pick up moisture even in this very dry place. We haven't had rain for over a month, and it may be a couple more months before we have any. If the cap were not metal, the salt cellars could be zapped in microwave once a week. But it is tricky putting any metal into the microwave. Leaving twistems on, and dishes with metallic glazes makes fireworks. The other thing is that putting something with very little moisture into microwave and giving more than a very short burst can hurt the microwave. I just had an idea. If the salt cellars had plastic caps with knobs on the inside that would just fit into the holes of the shaker, that would solve the problem. I don't like the metal caps. Inevitably you are ingesting cap metal corroded by the salt. Yuk. But I have to be careful not to criticise my daughter's table ware. Even my buying new ones that suit me would be implied criticism. And I could not hope to find ones pretty enough to please her.