Have you seen the pictures of some peoples’ food storage rooms? I’ve been on a couple of other sites and forums and it seems they all look kind of like this (this is NOT my food room):
I, on the other hand, have never had a big ol’ room I could dedicate entirely to food storage (bummer), so have had to make do with what I have. Right now that is a 7 1/2 foot by 6 foot room that used to be a coal room so it has a cement floor and no heat. We also use our “furnace” room for food and under beds and in closets etc. Now I LOVE that I finally have a room to put food in, it sure beats trying to put it ALL under beds and in closets. But I HATE that my room is so little–I’d sure love to have about 3 times the space!
(No, I’m not storing giant numbers–what could I cook with those?!) This first picture is of the left side of the room. You might have already noticed the stark contrasts between my room and the example room at the top of the post. My room is small, packed kind of randomly, and there is NO aisle. In fact, you can hardly see the floor and I have to move stuff or climb on buckets to get anything from the back of the room. The shelves are also really deep, so I put bottles of water at the back of some of them so the food is more to the front. So here’s what’s on the left side of the room:
1. More TP (plus some china behind it–you know when things get rough we’ll be wanting to break out the china).
2. This kind of runs with shelf 4–heat, light, kitchen tools (apple peeler, potato masher, hand meat grinder, etc). Firestarters, matches, lightsticks, candles, lamp oil, ziplocks, foil, the games we don’t want the kids getting into and losing the pieces . . .
This picture is right under the last picture in the room.
1. Supposed to be fruit shelf–we’re a bit short on canned fruits, so I’ve shoved other stuff there to fill the gap.Keep preparing! Angela
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LOL your food room looks like mine.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks for sharing that. Mine isn’t as full yet, but with me and the nephew (Cygnus) sharing space, it won’t take long!
Never ending struggle to make more room, huh?
Well, hey. At least you have a food room. We’re working on that.
The garage attached to our new home should help out a bit.
Somehow I didn’t picture you as the type to own a chocolate fountain. Interesting….. LOL
I have to say, I *really* like the fact that you have the TP and hygiene items up top. My first thought after having a bathroom sink leak down onto the TP stored underneath in the cabinet was I will henceforth always keep paper products higher than the floor. (I know, a pipe above your basement could still leak, but hey, we can’t do EVerything!)
That said, I have an idea for the 72-hour kits. What about a bench with storage? Do you have a kitchen table? Could you substitute a bench instead of some chairs? Think Sweden/Norway – a cute storage bench with a pad on top to sit at the table or to sit and take off/put on shoes by the front door or sliding door. You could fit your kits in there and they’d be in one spot.
My other thought is if you have a hope chest, don’t use it to store linens or mementos in your bedroom – use it as a bench or coffee table and put the kits in there instead. That way they are on an exit route. :-)
Hope that gets your creative storage juices flowing. Sorry, I’m a little OCD about storing things “pretty”. I’m totally drooling over the example food room. haha
Your room looks almost exactly the size of ours. It actually a roughed in bathroom in our basement, so it’s pretty tiny and has plumbing sticking out of the concrete floor in places. We don’t have built in shelving, since it will probably eventually be converted to a bathroom. Our shelves are freestanding, so items fall off the back sometimes. My solution to the issue with all the cans, was to buy a Shelf Reliance system. It should be arriving by next Monday. YAH! I can’t wait to get the cans all organized. I’ve been considering relocating the food storage to our furnace/water heater/utility room instead. I’m concerned about the heat given off by the appliances though.
I can sure relate with your tiny storage room.:)
Joyce
Worn Out–glad I’m not the only one!
HermitJim–You’re not just a kiddin! And keep in mind I’m feeding a family of 5, not just 2, so yours probably doesn’t need to be as full :)
Becky–I would love an attached garage! That will be fantastic! And yeah, this is the first house we’ve had that I’ve had a room of any size semi dedicated to food storage.
Melonie–the kitchen bench might be doable . . . I’ll have to dream about that one. Really no place to put a bench anywhere else. I’ve wanted one by the front door forever for mittens/hats/etc. but no place to put one (you seriously wouldn’t believe the small house we have). We’re all on one level, so there won’t be any broken pipes leaking into that room from anywhere.
And the chocolate fountain was left over from my sister’s wedding–mom sent it home with me thinking I could use it for relief society or something, but I never have. :)
Joyce–Jealous of the shelf reliance you’re getting–those look fantastic. I’d have to knock out some of these shelves or move my freezer to fit it in, but it would be worth it. Our furnace room doesn’t get too warm. No warmer than the rest of the house, so it’s as good a place as any around here. Thanks for stopping by!
Check out this pantry on the Food Storage made Easy forum. It has a neat rotating system that isn’t as “deep” as the Shelf Reliance, and it’s all homemade:
Lucky you I don’t even have half that much space yet. At least I’m only feeding two people not a crowd. I definately need to get more storage space though. I have stuff spread out in three different rooms.
But you have a ROOM! I have a closet! I agree though, the top photo is my “goal” room. Notice too, the lovely white walls and floor, clean and bright for those horrid post apocalyptic days! lol
Love your bread, I need to get busy!
Jeannetta–yep, definitely glad for the room. And I’d love to paint it all white and cheerful, but that’s probably best done BEFORE you get all your food shoved in your space! Maybe some flowers on the wall or something . . . :)
Hi Angela,
I’ve been meaning to send you a fancy, schmanzy, homemade thank you card. I thought it would be much nicer than a thank you email. But seeing as how it is now Friday night and I have yet to make a fancy, shmanzy, homemade thank you card, I think an email will just have to do.
I cannot tell you how much I appreciated getting your gift package in the mail. I didn’t know what to expect; I certainly wasn’t expecting 2 prizes! Elk jerky AND lip balm!!! Delicious elk jerky and homemade lip balm!!! A-mazing.
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Now to my dilemma. You see, I don’t know how to pay it forward. I don’t really have many “homemade-making” skills. I’m not sure what I could offer to (the very few) people who read my blog. But I will keep on thinking about it because I definitely want to pay it forward- and backward. Just wait, I’ll get a fancy-schmanzy card out to you yet, and maybe a little prize too.
Anyway, have a wonderful weekend and thank you for continuing to inspire me to become more self-reliant- I never miss any of your posts.
Olivia- the girl with hydrated red lips
I looked at the first room and was trying to figure out where in that house you had room for a place that big and envious of all your food. As I continued reading, I realized you don’t have that big room, but still envious of the food storage. I so need to get going with that…just wondering how when I procrastinate the grocery shopping at all costs until I HAVE to go and can then only afford the basics which break the bank.:) Emily
You should try getting some of those cansolidators or harvest shelves from shelfreliance.com. They make food storage so much easier and make it a breeze to rotate and organize everything. I just love them!
Hey, are you sure you sneak into my kitchen and snap a shot of my pantry?? No… yours is much more prepared than mine!! I'm workin' on it though :)
Your room looks great to me. I would consider one thing though. Storing significant amounts of water and food together in the floor is risky. The water jug's in the back corner where you don't look often near the pile of food that isn't yet in buckets is always the one that fails. Consider either making sure food is a couple inches off the ground or storing water elsewhere.
Don't ask how I know this.
TOR–Very true! We actually did have sprinkler spray leak through the corner of the house into the food room our first summer and it got a bunch of boxes wet, but the food was all in cans. Nevertheless, we cleaned out the whole bottom layer of the room and dried all the cans and boxes before putting them back in on 2×4's. Still a few things right on the floor that could use lifted up, but most everything is either in a bucket or off the floor a bit now just for the possibility of water leakage either from inside or outside the house. :)
I've cleaned and rearranged in the room since this post, but I still can't get to much in there without walking on buckets. I just have more buckets now.
I LOVE those shelves! I don’t have a storage room–just a couple of storage closets. It’s so hard to keep organized.
I used to work as a canoeing/camping instructor, and we stored all our food in action packers on our trips. It made me all nostalgic to see one again :)
So, do you pack your bucket foods in mylar? If not, how long does it stay good for?
My bucket foods are just in the buckets–no mylar. They’d probably store longer in the mylar, but I’m comfortable with 5-10 years in the bucket depending on the food being stored.
Any foiod storage room would be great, just how big was the room in picture #1, at least i can see what i need to work towards.
Thank you for all your wonderful information….it helps so much. I’m now canning my own meats ( who would have thunk), and increasing mu garden at this pount i don’t think we can have too much.
Renee
Angela, you might put some oversized cup hooks on the wood uprights holding your shelves up. Then hang your packs there. The outside of the shelves but up higher on them would get them a bit out of the way and free up space on the floor for another bucket or two. By the way my storage room looks like yours but smaller. Hubby is giving up his office to make me a storage room. His office never got finished when we built the house and now he can hardly walk through the living room and dining room because of all the buckets, and cases of cans stacked all over waiting for a place to put them. He is taking a weeks vacation to clean the room out and build the shelves and then I can put all the food in the (office)food storage room and my pantry and utility room instead of the public rooms of my house. Right now they aren’t for the public because I won’t let anyone in the house until they are free from food storage. Can’t wait!
So I was searching for Google pics to use on my FB timeline and came across picture #1. Then I read this: “Have you seen the pictures of some peoples’ food storage rooms? I’ve been on a couple of other sites and forums and it seems they all look kind of like this (this is NOT my food room):Beautiful large spaces filled with immaculately organized food and plenty of room to walk the aisle to get to it all. Kind of like a mini grocery store. Amazing. I’m always a bit jealous of places like that.”
I started laughing when I saw “this is NOT my food room” – because it IS mine.
Here’s the rest of the story: No, it does not always look like that. I only wish. Yes, it’s HUGE – and we feel very blessed. We have a very large family – 24 kids (20 adopted) and when that picture was taken, we had 20 children living at home. (We are now down to 12). To feed them all, we MUST store food – food we purchase on sale, food we can each year, as well as long-term food storage – grains, beans, even some freeze-dried, as well as all of the equipment and supplies.
Now – I am highly motivated to go deep-clean that room and get it back to looking like picture #1.
Love it! Thanks for letting me use your photo–and what an amazing mom you are! :)