Save on food storage organization by entering to win the Harvest 72″ Rotation System from Shelf Reliance a $459.99 value.

I can just picture this beautiful organized food storage area with all my cans neatly organized. Here’s a description of their awesome rotation system: “Food storage management has never been easier thanks to the Harvest 72″. Featuring patented front-loading technology that automatically rotates cans on a first in first out basis, the Harvest 72″ is the largest, most popular food rotation system offered by Shelf Reliance. This FRS is easy to adjust for different can sizes and boasts the capacity to hold up to 600 cans. With its easy-fit design and unique features, the Harvest 72″ makes food storage management a breeze.

Dimensions
Height: 72″
Width: 36.5″
Depth: 24.5″
Capacity: Up to 600 cans
Standard Row Configuration: 3 small rows, 1 medium row, 1 large row”

These things look heavy, luckily they will ship it for free too!

BTW we posted this because we entered the drawing to win the rotation system, after all we want one too. But it’s fair game, so just enter to win it for yourself.

Keep packaged salad mixes in a new zip lock bag with a couple of paper towels in it.
The paper towels absorb the excess moisture and will help keep the greens fresher longer. (Take them out of the bag they come in.)

Lemons will stay fresh for months if you keep them in a covered
container filled with cold water in the refrigerator. Be sure the
container has a tight fitting lid! Change the water every week or so.

For the first week of Jan (4-10)

Week # 1: 30 Gallons of Drinking Water
(If you can’t accomplish this in 1 week, don’t worry, just take your time and do it in baby steps.)

Baby Steps:

1. Choose Container & Location for storage
2. Collect or Purchase containers
3. Fill & Date Containers

Why store water?

• Storage of water is one of the simplest but most neglected areas of emergency preparedness. Many people store dried storage foods such as powdered milk, beans, rice, etc. which required water for eating.
• One gallon of water weighs 8 lbs.
• Water is more essential than food in sustaining life.

Why store water?

• Storage of water is one of the simplest but most neglected areas of emergency preparedness. Many people store dried storage foods such as powdered milk, beans, rice, etc. which required water for eating.
• One gallon of water weighs 8 lbs.
• Water is more essential than food in sustaining life.

How much water do I store?
According to the Red Cross and Civil defense, you need a minimum of 14 gallons per person for a 2 week period. That is enough for:
1 gallon per person per day, which is bare minimum survival.
3 gallons needed for enough water for personal hygiene, doing dishes.
4 gallons to have enough for more personal care, to wash clothing and minimal cleaning.
If you have pets you need to remember to include about a gallon a day per dog and a pint per day per cat.

Click here to order these water tanks online. Kind of pricey but worth it!

Shelf life of water?
Water must be stored in clean containers and out of sunlight. If stored properly water should have an indefinite shelf life. It is advised that you trade out your water every 6 to 12 months. (Suggested every Oct. Conference or when you change your clocks.) After sitting for a while water will taste flat. You will need to pour it between containers to aerate.

How can I store water?

• Gallon of filtered water
• 1 or 2 liter pop bottles
• juice bottles
• mouthwash bottles
• V-8
• punch
• Gatorade
• pedialite bottles
• Any bottles that come with food liquid in them (except oil) can be used.
• DO NOT USE Milk and oil containers!
• barrels designated for water
• coke barrels
• food barrels, as long as the food doesn’t have fat in it
• DO NOT use metal containers!
• 5 gallon plastic water containers are available at army surplus, sporting good stores, discount stores and preparedness stores.
• Dish washing soap bottles, liquid laundry soap bottles & dish washing soap, liquid soap bottles too. After you use it all up, don’t rinse it out. Fill with water and label it soapy water. That way you will have it to use for sanitation and not have to use precious drinking water Cooking, washing dishes, cleaning, personal hygiene, etc.

Where can I store water?
Water is bulky, but in smaller containers you can tuck here and there.

• bathroom cupboards
• in the outer darkness corners of kitchen cupboards
• in the backs of closets
• corners of upper closet shelves
• book shelves
• Behind beds and under beds.
• Food Storage Room
• You can tie a piece of twine or rope around the neck of 2 liter containers, mount a 2×4 along storage walls and hook the liter bottles over nails on those boards. These can be run high next to the ceiling to use otherwise wasted space in storage areas.

Warning: Be sure and keep water out of sunlight, heat and off of concrete floors.

How do I treat water?
It is not necessary to treat water from a public water supply if it is already chlorinated.
Clorox - Amounts according to civil defense guidelines. Double if water is cloudy. After adding proper dosage, stir and allow to stand about 30 minutes.
Quart - 2 drops
½ Gallon - 4 drops
1 Gallon - 16 drops
5 Gallons - 1 tsp
Boiling - Most water can be purified for drinking purposes by boiling it for 5 to 10 minutes.
Purification Tablets - Tablets that release iodine may be used safely to purify drinking water.
Essentials of a water treatment kit -
1 bottle Clorox (Clorox will loose it’s “umph” after about 18 months, so this needs to be rotated.)
1 tsp measure
1 medicine dropper
1 funnel
Coffee filters (these would be for filtering water with debris)

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Click on the image below to view all 52 weeks at once or download the 52 Week Purchasing Plan in PDF format here.

Coming next week: “Week # 2: 50 lbs of Wheat”

Cases of #10 cans as furniture. Cases of 6 #10 cans, available at the cannery, are convenient to use as stand-in furniture for things you may not have when first setting up house. Because these boxes are all the same size, you can use them like Legos to “build” the furniture you need. We placed our TV on a stack of 3 boxes covered with a tablecloth when we were newlyweds, because we didn’t have a TV stand. After my babies were born, I slept in a recliner moved into the master bedroom for a few weeks. I needed a place to put my drink, so we made an end table out of 4 cases of food storage. You could use the same idea for a temporary night stand.Cases of #10 Cans as Bed Frame. We used food storage boxes to build a guest bed. We had a cheap air mattress, but it’s hard to get up from an air mattress flat on the floor. We raised it up with food storage boxes stacked two deep. We also put one layer of food storage boxes under my oldest child’s bed. You can fit a surprising amount of food under a bed.

Food storage under furniture. Can a few boxes fit under a night stand? We considered putting some food storage boxes in our old couch. The springs were old, and anyone who sat on that couch sank down too low. We thought about getting rid of the springs under the cushions, filling the area with food storage boxes, and replacing the cushions on top. It might have made the couch more comfortable, but we never tried it out.

Using space in creative ways. Think creatively about the space available. Many homes have corners that aren’t being used. In our first home, the master bedroom was larger than we needed. We had extra room along one wall, so we stacked food storage boxes neatly along that wall. Food usually isn’t stored in the master bedroom, but that was the space we had available, so we used it. We also had half a wall available in a child’s room. We placed a steel shelving unit from Home Depot in there and stacked bulk purchased groceries in there, being sure to store the extra chocolate chips out of the reach of the kids. We should have covered up the shelves with a curtain or something to make it look better, but we never got around to it.

Closets? Think creatively about closet space too. If you have an extra linen closet, consider storing food there. We opted to store extra sheets in the garage so we could store extra food in the house. We lived in the desert where the food would not have stored well in the garage.

Crawl space. My sister’s house doesn’t have a basement, but it does have a crawl space under the house. She stores food there.

Organization. Storing food in this way takes an extra amount of organization. After taking apart the guest bed a few times to find the ingredient I needed, I finally made a “map” of what was where inside the bed. We put the food we used most so it was most easily accessible, and we labeled the boxes on the tops as well as the sides.

It is very very frustrating to not be able to find what you need when you need it. I know there are kidney beans in my basement somewhere, because I bought them in January. But could I find them last Wednesday, when I was canning beans? No. Sigh. If you can’t find it when you need it, it’s almost like you didn’t store it in the first place.

These ideas sound weird to some people, I’m sure. But we were doing the best we could with our space available. Home decorating is not one of my talents. I’m sure someone who is good at home decorating could creatively store food and still have a cute home.

Article found on: The Pantry Panel by Sara R.

These 2 videos show real LDS women with their food storage and talk about what’s important. Very helpful and lets you know how others accomplish their food storage goals.

Remember, what works for someone else may not work for you. So just use your best judgment. The sites and products recommended are exactly that, recommendations.

Here’s a good video on how to pack your food for long term storage in a 5 Gallon Bucket.

Many canned products now have a “for best quality use by” date stamped on the top or bottom of the can. “Expiration” dates are rarely found on canned food.

Canned food has a shelf life of at least two years from the date of processing. Canned food retains its safety and nutritional value well beyond two years, but it may have some variation in quality, such as a change of color and texture. Canning is a high-heat process that renders the food commercially sterile. Food safety is not an issue in products kept on the shelf or in the pantry for long periods of time. In fact, canned food has an almost indefinite shelf life at moderate temperatures (75° F and below). Canned food as old as 100 years has been found in sunken ships and it is still microbiologically safe! We don’t recommend keeping canned food for 100 years, but if the can is intact, not dented or bulging, it is edible.

Below is a sampling of how some manufacturers code their products so consumers know when the product was packaged. If you have specific questions about a company’s product, contact a customer service representative.

Note: For month coding, if a number is used, numbers 1 through 9 represent January through September, and letters O for October, N for November and D for December. If letters are used, A=Jan. and L=Dec., unless otherwise noted.

Note: For year coding, 8=1998; 9=1999; 0=2000; 1=2001; 2=2002, etc.

Note: When using a Julian Date remember that 001 = Jan 1 and 365 = Dec 31

You can find a Julian Date Calendar here.

Bush Brothers & Company
Four digits
Position 1: Month
Position 2 and 3: Day
Position 4: Year
Example: 2061 (February 6, 2001)Chiquita Processed Foods
Ten digits (only 6-8 are pertinent to consumers)
Position 6: Year (A=1999, B=2000, C=2001, etc.)
Position 7 and 8: Julian Date
Example: A195 (July 14, 1999- July 14 is the 195th day of the year)

Del Monte Foods
First line, four digits
Position 1: Year
Position 2, 3 and 4: Julian Date
Example: 9045 (February 14, 1999)

Faribault Foods - Parent company of S&W Premium brand
Consumers can send inquiries and product coding numbers via an online contact form, and a company representative will help them understand the coding. www.faribaultfoods.com

Hormel Foods Corporation
Five digits on the top line
Position 1-4: Information about plant and manufacturing
Position 5: Year
Example: XXXX0 (2000)

Pillsbury/Green Giant and Progresso
Five digits
Position 1: Month (letter)
Position 2: Year
Position 3: Plant information
Position 4 and 5: Date
Example: G8A08 (July 8, 1998)

Seneca Foods
Two digits on the first line
Position 1: Month (letter)
Position 2: Year
Example: L1 (December 2001)

Stagg Chili
Second through sixth digits
Position 2 and 3: Month
Position 4 and 5: Day
Position 6: Year
Example: S02050 (February 5, 2000)

Information provided by the Canned Food Alliance.

The question has been asked, “Why shouldn’t we store plastic water barrels on concrete?”

The following statement is from preparedness lecturer Kenneth Moravec:

“Concrete attracts fluids and ‘bleeds’. Anything that has been on or in that concrete will find it’s way into your plastic water barrel. This includes the lime in the concrete, any hazardous materials (i.e. gasoline, oils, kerosene or anything a contractor used in construction), algae, etc. Usually it is not enough to make the water toxic but it will taint the water enough to make the taste unbearable. And no amount of pouring it from container to container will take that taste away.”

By the way, this is also the reason we’re cautioned about placing plastic food storage buckets directly on concrete. Using 2 x 4s or plywood under barrels and buckets is an easy solution to the leaching problem.