Food Storage

I’ve always known food storage was important and I started even when we didn’t have much money.  Sometimes I would just buy a few extra cans of vegetables, and I bottled fruit from my father-in-law’s garden and orchards.  It wasn’t a lot but it gave me security knowing that we had a little food put aside for emergency situations.  When I first started I bought some cheap, hard plastic shelves to store the food on and I knew I needed to write the dates on the cans but usually didn’t have a marker handy or scissors to cut the packaging to get to the cans.  By the time I could round up the materials that I needed to do the job properly, my time was gone or sometimes I got sidetracked by something else that needed to be done and the dates didn’t make it on the cans or the cans even out of the boxes for a long time.   I have learned some things about making food storage a little easier since those days.  One thing is to buy good sturdy metal shelves that can bear heavy loads.  I had stacked 25 lb bags of flour on my shelves and after several months the shelves gave way and collapsed taking out other shelves on the way down which had syrup on them. It was a gooey, terrible mess of flour and syrup that not only was difficult to clean but I also loss those food items.  I learned to pay attention to the load rating and start with a good foundation of sturdy shelving.  Another thing that made it easier was to keep a permanent marker, scissors and packing tape in my food storage room.  I could quickly write the dates on cans or boxes, and the scissors were handy for opening difficult boxes or packaging. It made it so much easier and saved my fingers and nails.  Sometimes boxes would break apart and then I could quickly tape them back together and place a whole box of soup on a shelf which helped with organization and grouping.  I also learned that loading new food to the back of the shelf was very important so that older cans of food could be used first. One time I cleaned out my food storage and found cans of pears that were older than 10 years that had started to leak.  The seams had burst and there was another gooey mess to clean and more wasted food. I also learned to inventory what we had and what we needed so I didn’t waste money on buying more of what we already had.  I would make a list of what I wanted to buy and the quantity and stick in my purse.  Then if I ever came upon a sale of can goods, paper products, laundry soap, etc., I could check my list to see if I needed those items and how much to buy.  I also learned that as we increased or decreased in family members, our needs changed so I had to do periodic assessing of amounts needed.  One thing that really helped me save money on food storage was to shop case lot sales.  There is a store in my area that has a big case lot sale once a year.  When we didn’t have much money I would put away $25 dollars a month (that amount increased as our income did) and saved it for the year. Then when the case lot sale happened I would have $300 to spend at it.  During the year I made note of how many cans of chicken noodle soup, green beans, noodles and toilet paper as well as laundry soap and cleaning supplies, etc., we used so I knew how much to buy for our family for a year. I also learned that some things don’t store well like mayonnaise so I only bought a couple bottles of that at a time, and that oil is light sensitive and to store it in the dark so I placed a small blanket over my oil bottles.  I was once taught that if oil smells rancid or old to wipe the outside and inside rim of the bottle with a paper towel and smell it again.  If it still smells bad to stick your finger in it taste it before throwing it away.  Sometime it’s the oil on the bottle that’s bad not the oil inside.  We keep our food storage in our basement where it’s cooler because heat is hard on canned food, and I’ve heard of people who didn’t have much space so they put their cans of food and other supplies under beds.  These few things have helped me do better and be better at food storage and I have slowly learned to be less wasteful and more efficient at it.  There was a time when we were really low on money so I couldn’t go to the store but we had our food storage and I was able to make bread and use our can goods as well as toilet paper and we were really thankful that we had the resources to tide us over.