Food storage

I am finally finished canning my peaches, pears, and tomatoes, and making peach and pear jam (the strawberry jam I made in July) I put all the canning supplies downstairs and can finally get back to other things around the house that need my attention! Like the office and storage room.

On one of the boards I am on called baby center we like to share our Deals with coupons and such, and we have all been sharing our pictures of our food storage areas. This blog is an easy place to share those pictures! This isn't completely organized yet but it is a whole lot better than a few months ago. Alot of my supplies are dirt cheap or free, I couldn't have all this without learning to use Coupons, thanks to my friend Jamie for getting me really started!

This first area still needs work but the above shelf has storage of Coolers and a clear bucket of paper goods, our Christmas tree and suitcases, the top shelf I need to work on still but does have our #10 can of 72 hour kit food and a years supply of laundry soap at the end. The next shelf has Kleenex, sandwich bags, foils and wraps, garbage bags, and water bottles then all my canning supplies and sucker making stuff. The bottom shelf has all our toilet paper, very important!!! And 72 hour kit back packs just until the shelf in the garage are done, and a few paper towels, the rest is on the other side of the freezer. Oh and on the end is our 6 blue 5 gal water jugs. Underneath the shelves is 2 deep 6 gal buckets of wheat, sugar, beans, rice and oats.

This picture is hard to get, our cold storage is behind those first shelf and under the porch, it is 16 ft long and 5 ft wide. When we first moved in here (5 years ago this Nov.) Jarin's dad built us these shelves, I love them! On the right is the rest of our buckets of long term storage, 4 bottles of 5 gal of water, this is our spare bottles for our water machine upstairs we have 5 bottles upstairs. And then right up front is the working buckets, they have Gamma lids for easy access to my supply of sugar, rice, wheat, flour, beans and oats so I can easily refill my smaller upstairs containers. When they are empty I can refill them with my long term storage to keep it rotated.

This is the best I could get of my two rows of can rotators, the top shelf is the shelf reliance ones and the bottom is Fifo, I like them both for different reasons. Shelf Reliance ones can be sized side to side for any can, the Fifo one only have too sizes but can hold alot more cans, and they are easier to put together.

And of course all my canning this year!! This is the new shelves we just put in, we were hoping to be able to turn the shelves upside down like my parent did to give it a lip for the bottles, but they changed the design and we didn't notice till the 90lb box of shelving was already downstairs! We weren't taking them back up so we built them and Jarin is going to put string up through the holes to make a lip. The bottom shelves are extra food from the case lot sale and church cannery food, love those potato pearls!

I like to collect the low cut boxes when I visit Sam's Club and use them on my shelves like drawers, this is especially useful for cake mixes and hamburger helper so you can find the one you want, it's also great for rotating the food better. Then of course the cereal, I counted about 95 boxes, not including the bagged cereals. The top shelf is sugar cereals and the lower ones healthier ones since that is all I will let the kids have during the week. At the end where you can't see is a few cases of instant oatmeal packets.

The bin I put under the shelves to use like drawers, the first two are bathroom supplies,the next ones are first fruit snacks, roll ups etc. I buy lots when they hit on sale and can get them for .25-.50 cents! The next is cookies since we like them after lunch, I just got about 20 packages last week of Oreo's/Chips ahoy for FREE at Walgreen's, my mom got some too. The next is misc snacks for the kids lunches, chips, pastries, beef jerky, pudding, crackers etc. and the last one is totally full of microwave popcorn, that def goes on sale and is free with coupon way to often!

I think that all of it except what is upstairs and in the big freezer, it is always full! (evn if that means putting veg oil, flour etc. just as long as it's full.)