Storage ideas for food

[ladytoysdream]

I been thinking about selling off some of my canning jars.
Plan is to keep all the wide mouth jars I have.
So I would be selling off the standard mouths, the pints and the quarts. I do, do some canning, but mostly a lot of freezing.
Currently I have two upright freezers running.
I think my biggest problem is storing all the glass jars either full or empty. I just don't have the room in the kitchen area. I been trying to brainstorm some storage ideas. I been thinking about using the spare bedroom for food storage. One level house, no basement, no attic.
I been using coupons lately and when I find good deals, I been stocking up. Let me tell you....a year's worth of TP stacked up is scary. I used to be happy to have enough for a month ahead. I am in the process of buying canned dog food with coupons, and the cupboard I chose to use for that, is getting mighty full. I hope I didn't bury anything the hubby needs in the back of it.....

[frugalwarrior2]

I store my canning jars wrapped in newspaper in plastic tubs in the garage. I keep rings and unused lids right w/ them. There on gorilla shelving units. (the big orange ones at Sams Club that are spaced wide). My garage is attached.

[Ceashels]

Feel like a home construction project? This is a little extreme... but it popped into my brain after a long day:

Cousin Bear (nickname) had a log cabin kit built. Since he had issues with the contractor he spent 2 yrs without drywall but had 2x4 horizontal supports set between the studs of the wall frames. Instant shelves. He was reluctant to drywall the inside of his bedroom because he would lose his storage.

The functional application of this space would be to inset shelves into the walls and hang a lovely portrait over it so only YOU know what lies behind or to do something like this on the "inside" wall of a closet. You don't want to use an outer wall that has or should have insulation.

[Luckybustert]

Do you use your canning jars only for canning or do you use them for freezing too? (As long as you leave enough headspace, the canning jars are excellent for freezing things like soups and spaghetti sauce!)

[frugalfranny]

Oh - sorry ladytoysdream........I have no help but the post made me laugh.

I hope you don't get it stacked too high.........then open a cupboard and YOU are buried.........I just have this mental pic....sorry.

Do you have a garage that you could do anything with? How about watching for a storage shed on CL? (I have seen a couple on mine lately.)

Your post did remind me just how much I appreciate my basement. Thank you. As much as I need to get down there and re-organize (my love/hate relationship with it!).........I still love it.

[ladytoysdream]

......I have no help but the post made me laugh. I hope you don't get it stacked too high.........then open a cupboard and YOU are buried.........I just have this mental pic....sorry.

I have no problems stacking too high....it's my hubby that would make a mess looking for something, and then I would have to fix it. And listen to him, just a cussing...etc/etc. So I try very hard to do things right the first time. And make storage areas make sense so he can find things easy too.
Recently, he made pancakes on the weekend, he opened a box of mix....not seeing the first box already open in the front row of the cupboard. Then he opens a new bottle of syrup, and there already is 2 opened ones in the bottom door row in plain sight
Then I get to hear later on......*WHY DO WE HAVE 3 BOTTLES OF SYRUP OPEN ?!?!? *

My extra empty canning jars are currently stored in the addition on our garage. Which is fine. My current idea is to sort them, and keep about 1/2 of them. Sell off the extra ones. I bought a lot of used ones at garage sales last year. So why keep extras, I probably won't use. I need the space more for other things.

It's basically a old habit. When my kids were little, I had 1000 canning jars. That house had a large basement and I had the shelves to store full and empty jars. I canned about 600 jars a year. Then when we lived in the old farm house, I again, had space in the celler to store the jars. It felt good to open the cellar door, and see lots of food in neat rows on the shelves.
Now with just the two of us, 200 canning jars would be more than plenty. I just have to convince my old pack rat hoarder mind set, that a smaller number can be a good thing.


PS...I don't normally freeze in them. I do keep a few things in jars, in the freezer area of the kitchen frig. Again, I would worry about the hubby. I can just see him now, trying to get something defrosted in a hurry. Man of little patience. Sigh .............

[Grainlady]

I no longer do home canning because it's not cost effective for me, but I do use canning jars for storing a large assortment of dry goods in the pantry and in storage; including home dehydrated foods, and freeze-dried foods when I open #10 cans and divide the contents into smaller jars. Homegrown herbs are dried and stored in vacuum-sealed 1/2-pint and pint jars. I vacuum seal everything using the jar sealer on the FoodSaver.

I also use quart jars for making "Gifts-in-a-Jar" type mixes, vacuum seal them shut for longer storage, and these are my homemade "convenience" foods.

There are usually 3-4 jars of homemade kefir in the refrigerator, so that's another place I use canning jars. I also keep some grains vacuum-sealed and stored in the refrigerator, as well as powdered butter, powdered buttermilk, and powdered whole eggs.

Empty jars are stored in boxes in my great-grandfather's large traveling trunk that is used as a piece of furniture. We have used a number of old trunks as furniture/storage in our home over the years. Some other places you might be able to convert to storage...

-If you have the space, construct a window seat and you can use it for storage.

-A metal or plastic trash can can be converted to storage and used as a bed-side table. Top the container with a round sheet of plywood and cover the entire thing with a round table cloth that reaches to the floor. You can place a sheet of plexi-glass or tempered glass to keep the top of the table cloth clean.

-Shallow shelves can be built to fit in your closets up the side walls, or the walls on either side of the door/s.

-Under beds, under and/or behind sofas...

-Crawl space under your home.

-In one home we built shallow shelves on both sides of our dining room windows and extended the curtains to cover not only the windows, but also covered the shelves. No one knew there were shelves behind the curtains, it just made the windows seem larger.

All the wooden shelves we've built also had a dowel in the front to keep jars from sliding off them.

When you live in a small home, you get creative with storage of ALL kinds (LOL). In a former home we stacked recycled 2-liter plastic pop/soda bottles filled with water behind the sofas for emergency use.

[frugalwarrior2]

Grain lady-just had an issue w/ the dogs and water and a power outage. Love the pop bottle idea. We have the trailer size storage containers but I can't move them. So their useless.

Can I also usurp the thread to ask where you get your powdered items esp. buttermilk??

[krbshappy71]

You mentioned using the spare bedroom for storage. I didn't want to have to go to the spare bedroom for kitchen items as it is farther away so I moved a bunch of linen closet and pantry closet hardly used items to the spare bedroom so I could have my kitchen related storage closer to the kitchen. Shift and shift and shift........but worth it in the end. Plus I went through the stuff as I moved it to make sure I even still wanted it.

Storage holiday stuff that was in second bedroom was transferred to totes into the garage. I now have a Christmas Corner in the garage and all that stuff is out of the bedroom and linen closet.

I wuv rubbermaid totes, just slap on a big sign what it is, they stack so well!

[Grainlady]

Grain lady-just had an issue w/ the dogs and water and a power outage. Love the pop bottle idea. We have the trailer size storage containers but I can't move them. So their useless.

Can I also usurp the thread to ask where you get your powdered items esp. buttermilk??

I get SACO buttermilk powder from the grocery store - SACO FOODS

I only use powdered milk products at home (in order to save money). I culture reconstituted powdered milk with some reconstituted buttermilk powder to make "homemade" buttermilk (1/2 c. reconstituted buttermilk to 1-quart of reconstituted powdered milk). I let it stand in the oven with the light on (around 80°F) until it clabbers (12-hours or so). This makes a rich, thick, tangy buttermilk. Reconstituted powdered buttermilk is rather insipid and is nothing like commercial buttermilk, but works well when you use it in the powdered form in homemade mixes (i.e. pancake mixes). I can also use 1/2-cup of the "homemade" buttermilk to culture the next batch. I also use homemade kefir as a buttermilk substitute (I also make homemade kefir with reconstituted powdered milk).

Other sources for the many powdered products I use (powdered butter, powdered whole eggs, egg yolks and egg whites; peanut butter powder, powdered cheese, tomato powder, sour cream powder, yogurt powder, sweet cream powder...):

Frontier Natural Products Co-Op - Frontier Co-op | Bulk organic herbs, spices, teas & essential oils.

Emergency Essentials - Emergency Essentials - Be Prepared Emergency Preparedness Food Storage

Augason Farms (formerly Blue Chip Group) - Home

Walton Feed - Walton Feed

Ready Reserve Foods - Ready Reserve Foods

The Spice House - Merchants of Exquisite Spices, Herbs and Seasonings | Chicago | Milwaukee | Evanston | Geneva

Honeyville Grain - Canned Food Storage Products like Powdered Whole Eggs from our Food Storage Line

[Pemberleyan]

ladytoysdream, it sounds like selling some of your jars may be the answer for you and I'm sure someone will be thrilled to buy them.

We live in a house with a small basement, but no storage shed, garage, etc. When my mother downsized, I hated to get rid of all of the canning jars, so a lot of them are stored in our crawl space in boxes, on top of plastic vapor barrier, but without the lids and rings. Others are stored in my bedroom closet, the pantry and utility room.

[daughter of pearl]

Ia year's worth of TP stacked up is scary. I used to be happy to have enough for a month ahead.

This made me laugh so much!

My mom (the Queen of Stockpiling) passed 8 years ago. My dad bought TP for the first time since she died six weeks ago!

He is still living on the dried and powdered stuff she set aside.

Now that's a stockpile!

[ladytoysdream]

Well I got busy yesterday afternoon, and stopped my procrastinating, and sorted the jars in the garage addition. I found 5 dozen standard mouth quarts I thought I could part with and not miss. I decided to keep all the wide mouth ones.

So I put a ad up on craigslist about 2 pm and at 2:37, I had a email from a lady who says call me. I had to run a quick errand to town, so when I got back home, I called her. She and her husband were here just before 4 and bought the jars. I was pleased she did not haggle the price. I asked for $ 5 a dozen and got it. Not bad for used jars

[Russ]

You got to love quick sales. One less headache.

[ladytoysdream]

This made me laugh so much!
My mom (the Queen of Stockpiling) passed 8 years ago. My dad bought TP for the first time since she died six weeks ago!
He is still living on the dried and powdered stuff she set aside.
Now that's a stockpile!

I'm glad I put a smile on your face
Is your parent's house a big one ?
How does one stack that much TP up, in a orderly manner ?