Friday, July 16, 2010

Where I stand in my food storage

I have been accumulating food storage for a few months now. I haven't made any huge purchases but I have been consistently buying a few extras when I go to the grocery store or warehouse club. Here are a few pictures of my major food storage areas.

I am fortunate to have a large kitchen with ample storage room. I cleaned out parts of two cabinets and am currently storing:




A 3/4 gallon of olive oil, 24 lb of salt, 2 jugs of maple syrup and 6 lb of baking soda are among my stored items here. I need to move some of these items to the basement because I intend on this area being a dry storage area. Items like the salt, baking powder and baking soda that absolutely must stay dry will be in this cabinet. Our basement never floods and never should, but it can be a bit humid in our storage room. To protect these items sensitive to moisture, I'm going to store them in the kitchen.

Here's my other storage cabinet in the kitchen:


I have items like different kinds of soup and tomato products here. The Diet Pepsi doesn't count as food storage! I am a total soda addict and have the cavities to prove it.

These pictures don't even show the items I have in my regular pantry. I am storing bottles of apple juice (about 7 weeks worth) along with the every day items that everyone has in their pantry.

Here's my basement storage area:



It's filled in a little bit since I last posted a picture of it. On the top rack I have my canning supplies and two gallons of vinegar. The next rack down has canned fruits, vegetables, and soup. I've only just started storing these types of goods and I don't have very many yet. The next rack has my home-canned items - pickles, tomatoes, dried oregano (not really canned but stored in a Mason jar) and green beans. Hubby Dear and I are slowly increasing our harvest from our garden and I hope to can even more next year. The next rack down has a mish-mash of items like Crisco, applesauce, jelly, 15 lb of peanut butter, salad dressing, and a variety of condiments. The bottom part of the storage rack has a couple of large plastic containers. In one I am storing boxes of baking mixes. Right now all it has are two lonely boxes of brownie mix. The other container has 36 lb of pasta.

When I have filled up this storage unit, I have a couple of shelves on other units cleaned off. I will, however, need to buy some sort of additional storage. I'm thinking about getting one of these from Shelf Reliance:


That would make rotation so easy, but I'm not sure it is the most efficient use of space.

When I look at what we've accumulated so far, I feel like we are getting somewhere.
That is until I watch some of the many YouTube videos where fellow preppers show off their food storage.

Sigh. We have so far to go.

We are making headway, though, and now that Hubby Dear has given me a budget, I'll be able to make consistent purchases. I am considering changing my Month Three Preps in order to make a large leap in our food storage next month.

No comments:

Post a Comment