to spank, or not to spank.

soooo, here it is, i spanked sebastian. so i always said i would never spank. but here's what happened. so he has this thing where he gets into somethng...anything that he can dump out, liquid, seasonings, whatever, if it can be dumped out, he'll dump it out. we've sent him to his room, we've tried making sure everything is out of reach...but he can climb. and lets face it i can't watch him every second, and these thing happen in a second! so we've sent him to his room, we've put hm in timeout...but the way i see it is the next time he sees soethng that he wants to dump out all he is thinkng is "oooooo ths looks fun" he's not thinking about how he could get n trouble. so the last time he did it he spilt cocoa all over the kitchen floor. we have it in a cabinet. and we were about to leave somewhere and i went to use the restroom, and when i came out, i saw a brown powdery mess all over the kitchen floor, i probably would have taken a picture but i was to focused on thinking of what to do to get him to understand. so i spanked him, hoping tha tit would stick in his mind better (it didn't btw, he's done it twice since then) so here's my plea...what do i do to a two year old who wont listen. i really don't want to spank, b/c, well for one, so far it hasn't worked. but 2 (and this isn't meant to be a bash on parents who do it) but i feel like it's an easy way out. like yah a kid is gunna listen to you if you threaten them with your hand raised in the air, who wants to get hurt, i'm sure it might work, i just feel like theres a better way to handle it. sebastian is generally pretty good and listens pretty well, but he's two and has his moments. so what do i do? i can't ground him, time out only works so well, and at certain times. ican't really take toys away from him, b/c after about 5 mntues he'll forget about it. so please help. iif you have any advise for me i would greatly apreciate it!!!!!