Sunday, September 20, 2009

My Pantry

I thought I'd post some pictures of my pantry.  This isn't my food storage area; I don't have a food storage area yet.  But this is some of the food storage in my pantry.

The room is a snuggy 4' X 4'.  It has 4' long shelves on one wall, 3' long shelves on another wall, and some items hanging on what's left of the other two walls.  The door cuts off one corner of the room so it isn't quite square.

I made the shelves using the metal brackets you can get at Home Depot or Lowe's.  You screw the brackets to the wall, then attach the shelf supports to the brackets, then lay the shelves on the shelf supports.  I also screw the shelves to the shelf supports, so they won't tip up if I set somthing heavy on one side of a shelf.

This first picture is of the upper shelves on the 4' wall.  You can see several #10 cans of food, plus some spices and some other things.  The glass jars on the top shelf next to the dehydrator contain some freeze dried shredded cheddar cheese and freeze dried peach slices.  Although it's best to store food in the dark, I feel OK using these glass jars since the light is normally turned off in that room, and since food isn't stored in them for long.  I refill the jars from the cans periodically.

You can also see that I took some advice from one of the other food-storage blogs and put all my small baking items in a plastic box.  So when I make cookies or something, I can just pull out that box rather than all the small containers of salt, baking soda, vanilla, etc.

One other thing I'd like to mention is the boxes of Farm House Rice Pilaf on the shelf.  I wouldn't store boxes like these in my long-term food storage area.  They are just too easy for pests to get in to.  In fact, I usually put them in plastic boxes in my pantry, but my plastic boxes are all full right now, so I left them out.



The second picture is the lower shelves and floor space on the same wall as the first picture.  You can see some of the plastic boxes I keep small food items in, and some of my soapmaking supplies.  And you may notice an Emergency Essentials box that contains a 5-gallon mylar bag of water.



The next picture is of the top shelves of the wall of 3' shelves.  The top shelf has a re-used #10 can that I put pre-measured packages of home-made brownie mix in.  You can also see some clear-plastic containers with freeze dried strawberry slices and broccoli.  Eventually, I'll keep the #10 cans in the food-storage area and re-fill these containers from them.  That'll save a lot of room in this pantry.




And finally, the last picture shows the bottom 3' shelves.  You can see that the food items are starting to encroach on this space, which was once all bowls and other kitchen items.  I don't know whether you can make out the white label on the can on the bottom shelf.  It's the graham-cracker-crust mix I made last weekend.  You can also see the jars of peaches my brother canned (thanks Dan!).



So that's it for my pantry.  As you can see, I'm going to be needing that food-storage area in the back bedroom soon.

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