DIY Food Storage Pantry Save Time Save Money Buy Bulk and Be Prepared

We are using some extra space under the stairs to store our bulk food and pantry items. Since we have been growing more and more of our own food we needed a good place to store it all! The SSL Family Mom has also been cooking and baking almost everything from scratch which means that we have a lot more baking supplies on hand. This space will give us a climate controlled area in our home using some extra space that was just piled with junk. After a few trips to Goodwill the space was cleared out and ready for some shelves.

This will be the first in a series of videos and articles about how we are storing food here in our suburban home. The first step I am tackling today is to get the shelves put in a lay out the space to handle the size items that we will most likely be storing. In the future I will continue to work on this area and enclose it with drywall, run electric for lights and outlets, paint the shelves, seal the concrete floor, and add a small dehumidifier to keep the moisture down.

The ideal conditions for dry food storage is a humidity level below 15% and temps from 40-70 degrees Fahrenheit (4-21c). The basement here in Michigan is always at about 65 degrees so we are in good shape there but the humidity is much higher in the summertime. This will be the biggest challenge and that is why I want to seal this area off from the rest of the basement and use a dehumidifier to keep the moisture levels down. That will come as a later addition as I said but for now back to getting these shelves setup!

I am using all 2X4 construction for the shelf framing for a couple of reasons. This is the cheapest and most readily available type of lumber for us here and also because a 2X4 can hold quite a bit of weight if installed correctly. I probably could have used smaller lumber but in the end these shelves will be able to hold anything I can imagine putting on them. The shelves themselves are made from cheap OSB (oriented Stranded Board) for similar reasons. It is cheap and easily available here and will serve as a good solid shelf for many years. OSB does not do well in high moisture environments but since we are going for climate control here we should be ok.

I am using a 16 inch deep shelf which will hold about 4 quart size mason jars as well as most of the other items that we will be storing here. The bottom shelf is the tallest to hold emergency storage buckets (either 5 or 6 gallon). The next shelf can hold any large size canning jars for juices or pickles. The next two shelves are sized for quart size jars and the top for smaller jam jars and canned goods. With this design I should be able to fit 30-60 days worth of food for our family of five.

 

Tools used in the construction of the shelves

Chalk line -  http://amzn.to/1BmGB0V
Speed Square - http://amzn.to/1ATc9KJ
Craftsman Jigsaw - http://amzn.to/1AlUo4X
A better hammer!! - http://amzn.to/1BmHgPY
Porter Cable Nailer - http://amzn.to/1AlV2PV

All of these and more items used by the SSL Family are available in the

Simple Suburban General Store

 

 

 

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Presently there is this growing trend of eating only organic food

Presently there is this growing trend of eating only organic food. Yet, not all of the merchandise claiming to be organic are always this way. In addition, it is possible to spend much more on goods claiming to be organic and get lower high quality than the standard vegetables grown with pesticides. The only way you can be sure that the meals youre consuming is 100% organic would be to commence growing it oneself. Now it really is extremely effortless with aquaponics.This new kind of farming is really easy to place in practice, extremely practical and lucrative. There are quite couple of factors you may need in an effort to set it up, issues that are also very cost-effective, so you may not must invest a fortune on pricey equipment. As well as that, it is so easy to mount and start the aquaponic farm which you will need only couple of minutes to know the principles and an additional few to place them in practice. In a matter of days you may location your aquaponic method and start developing your fish. Their role is the fact that of making the bio-nutrients for the plants. When there are sufficient nourishing substances inside the water, youll be able to propagate the seeds then wait for them to grow. Meanwhile you will have to take good care in the fish, to ensure that they continue to make food for the plants. The excellent this can be that you wont have to clean the water for the fish yourself, as that is what the plants will do with their roots. Hence, it will be simpler not merely to develop plants, nevertheless it may also be less difficult to grow fish this way than should you have been setting only an aquaculture.

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Garbage 101 Adopt a Meat Garbage Disposal Never Waste Food Ever Again

"40 percent of food purchased for the home is wasted.  Half of the worlds produced food is wasted."  Thats a huge amount of food wasted, food produced but never eaten.  And certainly most of that wasted food ends up in landfills. 

We are proud to announce that we  here at Simple Suburban Living waste 0% of our food.  Absolutely no food whatsoever finds its way from our house into a landfill.  Remember from yesterdays post that landfills should be the last resort for our waste.

All of our food scraps get fed to the dog or chickens, and anything they dont eat ends up in our compost piles.  We have a worm compost bin in the basement, and a compost pile in the backyard. 

Our chickens are our vegetable, grain, fruit, and dairy garbage disposals.  They are fed chicken feed also, but they just love the food scraps, too. 

 

 

 

 

~ Our Meat Garbage Disposal ~

 

If you have ever read the ingredients on most dog food packages, you will notice the first ingredient listed is corn.  You dont even want to get me started on the subject of corn, but more importantly, dogs are not meant to eat corn.  They are carnivores.  They need meat.  With that said, our dog eats all of our meat scraps and leftover meat.  We do give her dog food also, but not nearly as much as we used to because her diet is supplemented with our leftovers.  We have noticed a huge improvement in her coat and bathroom habits since weve changed her diet. 

 

You can help save the environment and a stray by adopting a faithful friend and meat disposer.?

 

 

 

To make things easier and more convenient, we keep food "garbage" bowls on our kitchen counter.  One bowl is for the chickens, the other for the worms and compost pile.  We found that we compost more when we dont have to walk the food scraps outside.  In other words, we found that we are a very lazy environmentally-minded folk.


Serving our food waste to the animals and compost piles is now an integral part of our life and the changes were easily implemented over a short period of time.  Even the girls take an active part and know where to separate the food scraps.  I just love it when the youngest SSL Kid says "compost".

“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” --Maya Angelou   


This post was shared at:  Homestead Barn Hop, The Backyard Farming Connection Hop, Homestead Blog Hop

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