Prep Genrl Having enough space for your stuff

[nomifyle]

My house is messy because I'm overflowing with my stuff and it overwhelmes me, therefore I just get lost in trying to get organized. This spring my DH built another room on the back of our mobile home. Included is a second bathroom and a nice pantry. The remainder of the room was supposed to be a dining room. The dining room thing fell by the wayside because we bought a new bed for our room and put the one we had in the "dining" room. So now its going to be a guest bedroom. We aren't quite finished with everything but its coming along.

I filled my pantry very quickly and now have little room for anything else and I still need a lot more space for pantry like stuff. Every month we get commodities, and some things are just more than we could use up in a month.

One thing we usually get is 2# bags of dried beans, we'd have to eat beans a couple times of day to stay ahead. I'm thinking about dehydrating some, have to cook them first and then dehydrate. Quick and easy to rehydrate, just minutes instead of hours to cook from scratch.

A local store had a sale on canned fruit, $1 a can. So I bought several cans and now have to rotate some older cans with the new ones, DH likes canned fruit, but I told him he can't eat a can every day, too expensive. Commodities use to give us a total of eight cans a month, but now only four at best, sometimes their idea of fruit will be cans of jelled cranberry flavor, disgusting, but DH even likes that. I don't serve it very often, and have several cans and I constantly give it away. I just do not have room to store it.

I also store extra food and supplies in my camper, took the sofa and put two big deep cabinets it it space, all full.

With the extra bedroom and my food supply I'm good to go if a few people show up on our doorstep.

My downside of stored stuff is water, not enough of that stored. If I had more I would not know where to store it.

Judy

 

[summerthyme]

Any chance of finding a way to build a small storage room/building, even with stuff like recycled pallets? Giving away canned food that your hubby likes (no matter what your opinion of the nutritional value... if TSHTF, CALORIES are going to be our biggest concern, with "is it good for us" WAY down the list) because you don't have room seems counterproductive.

Do you have any sort of a plan in place, in terms of what you are storing for prep foods? While calories are king, quality protein, fat, vitamins, minerals DO need to be part of the diet. If you've never read it, look for a used copy of "Making the Best Of Basics" by James Talmage Stevens. It's one of the most valuable "all in one" resources I've seen for allocating resources so that you don't end up with just a hodgepodge of assorted foodstuffs, which will be very difficult to assemble into reasonably acceptable meals and diets over time. Older versions are at least as good as the newer books, and are available used from Amazon or Abebooks very cheaply (your shipping will be higher than the book cost)

I'm assuming you already know the tricks like "stack boxes of #10 cans in the living room (or bedroom next to the bed) cover them with a pretty tablecloth (or whatever repurposed fabric seems appropriate) and use it for a coffee table or end tables.

I do know exactly what you're talking about, and I'm fortunate enough to live in a house which is plenty big for the two of us (it was plenty big enough for raising 4 teens, although not every kid had their own bedroom). Hubby often teases- and he's about half serious- that we need to think about digging out the basement under the other half the house... half has a full basement, half is only a crawlspace. But we also have barns, sheds and outbuildings, which makes a huge difference.

With our income cut drastically when we sold the cows, most of my "preps" have been on the cleaning, sorting, and organizing end of things. Still not completely done (what I want do to more than anything this winter is FINALLY get our great room completed- we have all the materials, wallpaper, crown molding, etc- but it's all piled in front of my 40 linear feet of bookcases, and I can't get to any of my hard copy reference material!), but we did finally get the upstairs finished (those rooms need flooring installed yet, but the money isn't there at this time) I can now find my herbs, my fabrics, my wine and beermaking stuff, etc...

But God help us if any of the kids come home to stay, even temporarily!

Summerthyme

 

[nomifyle]

Thanks ST, I only gave a few cans of that jelled cranberry stuff, just don't have room in that area for any more, I guess I'll reconsider when I get more. I hate to get rid of any food, even if its unhealthy.

Yes, I do have plans for what I'm storing, every month I add to my store of vitamins, I have long term food storage (freeze dried) that a bought a few years back when I though I had some extra money. Besides a mountain of canned foods, I have some quick cook, add water dehydrated foods would feed us for a few weeks and longer when I add in regular canned foods. I have beans beans and more beans, both canned and dried. I don't need meat seasoning in mine, but DH likes some in his, so I have allowed for that. He's a big meat eater and a picky eater.

Its just that my climate controlled space is bulging.

Judy

 

[SAPPHIRE]

Your mess, my mess, our mess............yes indeed........I keep stacking and not organizing since I don't feel well most of the time........but the time is about here when IT MUST BE DONE..........

 

[nomifyle]

Well, I may have had a breakthrough in my storage problems. The room where my pantry is was supposed to be a "formal dining room", to me a complete waste of space. It's looking like it may be a guest bedroom.

Yesterday my DH suggested I put some of my folding bookcases in there to house small appliances and other misc things that we have no place for. I am so excited, I've gotten one in there already and have been able to get so many things off the floor in the kitchen that we have been tripping over.

I still have two months of commodities in the back of my van that I had no where to put.

I'm so excited.

Judy

 

[CnMO]

Judy, if you are snowed in now, take a look at these pictures they may help you find ideas for your storage.

look up
Houzz high shelf
Houzz pantry
Houzz storage design

This site Houzz, is all pictures by Designers, have fun looking

 

[nomifyle]

Judy, if you are snowed in now, take a look at these pictures they may help you find ideas for your storage.

look up
Houzz high shelf
Houzz pantry
Houzz storage design

This site Houzz, is all pictures by Designers, have fun looking

Thanks, nice site. I do have a pretty nice pantry, just not large enough and badly needs organizing. With the addition of the shelves in this new room, I do think it will help me organize the pantry and while I'm in the process I'm going to do a good inventory, including marking the ends of cans with the date in black marker, easier to see. I get so overwhelmed, but I've made headway with the new shelves.

Judy

 

[SackLunch]

Under the Guest Room Bed

I'm a visual person, so I like to get a visual on food supplies. My visual is a 6-gallon bucket full of "dense" food--like wheat, rice, beans, sugar.

A 6-gallon food bucket takes up about one square foot of floor space and holds roughly 45 pounds of rice, which happens to roughly equal to the calories for one person for one month. (I like round numbers, so bear with me on the math.)

Rice is about 1500 calories per pound. One 6-gallon bucket holds about 45 pounds of rice. Doing the math (check me!) means one bucket of rice provides about 2200 calories per day for one month.

So when I have twelve 6-gallon buckets full of dense dry food, I have enough calories for one person for one year. "Inventory" becomes easy if I just have to count full buckets. Then I don't overbuy and crowd myself out of my house.

I can visualize 12 buckets. I can fit 18 of them under a twin bed, 20 under a double bed. No need for box springs, just flop the mattress on top. You can get fancy and put a board in between, but the mattress works without a board on top of the buckets. Really. Try it.

If you use a board between the buckets and the mattress, you can substitute some of the buckets for flats of cans or other storage foods. You only need about half the buckets to provide a sturdy bed.

This works with 5-gallon buckets for a lower bed. Five-gallon buckets hold roughly 35 pounds, so you'll only get about 1700 calories per day for one month per bucket. You get the idea.

 

[nomifyle]

I'm a visual person, so I like to get a visual on food supplies. My visual is a 6-gallon bucket full of "dense" food--like wheat, rice, beans, sugar.

A 6-gallon food bucket takes up about one square foot of floor space and holds roughly 45 pounds of rice, which happens to roughly equal to the calories for one person for one month. (I like round numbers, so bear with me on the math.)

Rice is about 1500 calories per pound. One 6-gallon bucket holds about 45 pounds of rice. Doing the math (check me!) means one bucket of rice provides about 2200 calories per day for one month.

So when I have twelve 6-gallon buckets full of dense dry food, I have enough calories for one person for one year. "Inventory" becomes easy if I just have to count full buckets. Then I don't overbuy and crowd myself out of my house.

I can visualize 12 buckets. I can fit 18 of them under a twin bed, 20 under a double bed. No need for box springs, just flop the mattress on top. You can get fancy and put a board in between, but the mattress works without a board on top of the buckets. Really. Try it.

If you use a board between the buckets and the mattress, you can substitute some of the buckets for flats of cans or other storage foods. You only need about half the buckets to provide a sturdy bed.

This works with 5-gallon buckets for a lower bed. Five-gallon buckets hold roughly 35 pounds, so you'll only get about 1700 calories per day for one month per bucket. You get the idea.

Thanks, I opted to use one gallon cans to store my long long term food storage that and #10 cans. The weight of the buckets is too heavy for my aging body. Those cans are not my storage problems, its shorter term food storage that I've had problems with. But I'm making headway with the four shelf unit additions.

Judy



Judy

 

[SackLunch]

Bucket weight, difficulty opening, and aging bodies are the big drawbacks to the bucket bed idea. Gamma lids help a bit, but you still have to move the dern buckets.

One blasphemous thing I do is that I don't rotate anything with a 25-year shelf life. Before someone gasps and flames me, hear me out.

I have a gamma lid 5-gallon bucket of rice in a convenient kitchen corner. When it runs out I refill it with a brand new bag(s) of rice--any size I can comfortably carry. I don't open any #10 cans or the nitrogen-packed, 25-year buckets of rice to refill it--they're good for 25 years and stored out of the way. The result: far less schlepping heavy stuff around!

All the short-term stuff with its various sizes, packaging, and storage requirements are a challenge. (Rice needs lots of "sauce"!) I still haven't figured out a good way to store home or commercially canned or dried items without shelves. If I can't see it, it's like I can't remember it's there--and I definitely want to rotate the short-term stuff.

What kind of shelving units did you find?

 

[nomifyle]

Bucket weight, difficulty opening, and aging bodies are the big drawbacks to the bucket bed idea. Gamma lids help a bit, but you still have to move the dern buckets.

One blasphemous thing I do is that I don't rotate anything with a 25-year shelf life. Before someone gasps and flames me, hear me out.

I have a gamma lid 5-gallon bucket of rice in a convenient kitchen corner. When it runs out I refill it with a brand new bag(s) of rice--any size I can comfortably carry. I don't open any #10 cans or the nitrogen-packed, 25-year buckets of rice to refill it--they're good for 25 years and stored out of the way. The result: far less schlepping heavy stuff around!

All the short-term stuff with its various sizes, packaging, and storage requirements are a challenge. (Rice needs lots of "sauce"!) I still haven't figured out a good way to store home or commercially canned or dried items without shelves. If I can't see it, it's like I can't remember it's there--and I definitely want to rotate the short-term stuff.

What kind of shelving units did you find?

I don't rotate the long term storage food that's in #10 cans and I have yet to rotate the basic foods that I packed in the paint cans. I did open a can last year that I stored in '08 and the food was fine.

For the time being I'm storing my home dehydrated foods in glass jars in my laundry room, when I get a handle on other things I may do something different with that.

They are actually wooden book cases that I got at Pier 1 after Katrina, almost too heavy for me to handle these days, but I managed, they also fold. DH built this room on the back of our house this year, it has a nice bathroom and a pantry. Unfortunately the pantry filled up quickly. The room was supposed to be a "formal" dining room. We do not need a formal dining room, we never have company. We put an extra double bed in there and had a lot of room left. We bought a new 15 cuft freezer in there and DH suggested putting the shelving units in there to house clutter we had in the kitchen. This is working out well and I have so much hope to declutter at least the main rooms in the house. We have been drowning in clutter, having combined his house, my house and things from my mother's house.

Judy