Safe Home Food Storage is a 15-page booklet from the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. Peggy Van Laanen guides us through how to preserve food quality, make the most of your food dollar by preventing spoilage and how to prevent food-borne illnesses caused by harmful bacteria. Understand that The Food Storage Timetable does NOT take into consideration that nitrogen packed buckets or cans will last longer than having things in the refrigerator, on the pantry shelf or in the freezer. This booklet only covers the things in your kitchen - not in your long-term food stores.
J. Reuben Clark (1937) said: "Let every head of household see to it that he has on hand enough food and clothing and, where possible, fuel also, for at least a year.
This next
handout - no author - has a plan for the year for food storage. Each month has a spiritual thought, a spiritual goal, a provident living goal, a storage goal and a 72-hour kit goal. If you are already storing food then you can go through this list like a scavenger hunt with your children or spouse to see if you have everything on the list. In this way you can count everything you have as well and put it in some kind of order.
This
52 Week Food Storage Purchasing Plan can also be used to help you check off the things you already have. Calculated by the week instead of by the month like the previous handout, it breaks things down into weekly units. This could be used as a checklist or as a purchasing plan. Go through your storage and check off the things you have and then make plans to purchase the rest. In economic hard times you may have to split the bigger things down even farther - for instance the 50 lbs of wheat could be bought by the can until you have 50 lbs, or you can buy a 50 lb bag and the cans and oxygen absorbers to get the job done yourself. Either way it's a plan.
I especially like the 4th picture on this handout showing an interesting concept in how to plan a pantry. Check it out!
Here are some other ideas that you could use for storage. Do you have a long, skinny closet that it would be impossible to put shelves in and still be able to get in it? Put a rolling cart and fills the whole space, but rolls out to get to the supplies.
You might be able to have light-weight stuff on it for the best roll-ability.
If you already have existing shelves with books on them, try using the back of the shelf for foodstuffs. This is not the optimum if you want to rotate foods, because you will need to remove books to get to things, but if it's all you have - the use it!
These canned food organizers work for some people. I haven't found any that work for me, yet, but I do have jars like the ones on the top shelf. These kinds of jars can be purchased at WallyWorld.
Or you can make your own food storage box with a soda pop box. I'm not sure how they would work, but at least they would keep like things together. Too bad I don't drink that much soda.
And then there's the "mess to clean up after an earthquake. This guy should be very glad that these are not glass jars. I have a friend who will not store things in glass for this very reason. On the other hand, glass can be placed on the bottom shelf where it won't fall.
Whatever your storage idea, keep it simple enough that you can keep up with it.
happy posting - Glenda
