Emergency Food Supply: Week 27
Finding Space for Food Storage
Where Are We Going to Put It All?
The ideal food storage area is cool, dry, dark, and protected from pests. A basement room often fits these criteria, but what if your house doesn’t have a basement? What if you live in an apartment? There are still ways you can sneak food storage into your space.
- Look down: Store cans and boxes under the upholstered couches and chairs. You can put risers under a bed frame to create more storage space under a bed, perfect for rolling plastic storage containers.
- Look up: Can you install shelves high up on the walls, near the ceiling in closets, above cabinets, above your washer/drying?
- Look behind. Hang shelves on the backs of doors. Store food behind your clothes in the closets, behind books on a deep bookshelf. Put rolling carts in the awkward space beneath the stairs.
- Look inside: Replace a coffee table or TV stand with a large chest. If you’ve got one of those charming kitchen nooks with built-in table and bench seating, turn the bench into a hinged storage cabinet. If you’re handy, you might remove sheetrock in the stairwell and put small shelves between the studs.
- Look outside: If your house is just too full of stuff, consider storing some things in the garage so you free up space to store food inside. (Make sure the things you move outside can handle temperature extremes. Food cannot.)
Wherever you end up storing your food, remember that it needs to be in a food rotation so you are using it before it goes bad. It shouldn’t be stored forever. Short-term storage rotates quickly, and long-term storage rotates slowly—but it DOES rotate!
Your Task This Week
Identify where you will be putting your stored food. How will you remember this food so that it gets used?
