Featured Pantry Ideas

Should have made it bigger. I have both built in and movable shelves. They are 4 half gallon jars deep and 1 jar tall. My canners and large pots slide under the move able shelves so they are out of the way.

 

We do not have a kitchen pantry so we had some custom full height wood cabinets made. The shelves are adjustable so we can add or take away as needed. The shelves are however pretty deep and I wish we would have made them more shallow. It's much harder to rotate stock and sometimes things get lost or forgotten in the back.

 

I rotate mine from front to back, left to right. Not sure I can explain this right. When we put up the jars, the jars on the far left face front so you can read the writing. The next row faces back and so on. When I pull a jar I slide the rest forward, move one from the next row over turning so the label faces forward and then push those jars back. It's like a U.

 

You "can" (pun intended) make tis 1000 can panty, just have to modify dimensions to suit your needs. I want to build this myself in our bacement.

 

Make sure your shelving is heavy duty enough. Canned food is heavy. Home canned food is in glass jars, and you don't want shelves collapsing. We went with the Sam's Club really heavy duty shelves. A pain to put together, but I can put just about anything on them.

 

Make at least some of the shelves deep enough to accommodate a case of canned goods (4 x 3 cans).

 

Make some of your shelves the exact right size for some things you know you will have. That is what I did for 5-gallon buckets and #10 cans. Then make other shelves at random heights for mixed items.

 

I used Lozier shelving out of an old grocery store. Shelves are movable up an down. They will handle 200 lbs per shelf.

 

I built a set of L shaped food shelves out of 1x6 and 1x2,for having in the laundry room. In most situations I can stack 2 cans high. And 2 cans deep. When it comes to the store bought veggies. The can of what ever I grabbed,is on the far left. It works great for me. Seeing how it's only me n my 2 lil dog's.

 

We did something a little different. We designed and built a new house three years ago, and since we live in tornado alley, we constructed a 6’X10’ concrete-walled room in the middle of the house, just off the kitchen. It provides food storage space for daily use, and a several-day supply of survival items for short-term emergencies. It has narrow, medium (adjustable), and wide, floor-to-ceiling shelving to accommodate most everything. It also has enough room for a second upright fridge/freezer combination.

Since we moved here, tornados have twice been close enough to send us to the room for shelter. It sure beats huddling on a bathroom floor.

The only improvement I plan to add to the room is a canned-goods rack that will make it easier to organize and rotate cans.

I also designed a long, shallow, storage closet down the length of one hallway. Two sets of double doors provide easy access and look neat, while adjustable 12” metal shelving gives a lot of options for different size items to fit. However, instead of closets, I wish we had made the storm room bigger so we could fit all of our storage items and a gun safe inside.

 

This is a picture to give you an idea on what my pantry shelves look like. They are heavy duty metal shelving that was used in an auto mechanic shop. They were being given away and hey hard to pass up that kind of deal. I lined all walls with these deep shelving and also have to metal 5 shelf rolling carts. Mine are deep enough to hold 12 pint sized jars front to back and tall enough to allow double stacking. I keep dry goods in buckets on another wall in the pantry. Gives you an idea though.

 

Not picking on your spotless storage room but just the kind of pic I've been looking for,anyone that stores stuff in glass needs to ask their self what's going to happen if the ground ever shakes real hard for any reason ??

 

You know how they say never keep all your eggs in one basket? That is just my canned goods. I also have tin cans and dried from garden stored in buckets. Those are located on the opposite side of the room. I'm not saying TX will never have an earthquake, but having the ground shake is not a main concern here. What I do worry about is a tornados collapsing the roof on that side of the house. My stockroom is one of the boys old bedrooms that I converted when he moved out. It is located on the opposite side of the house from the kitchen which has its good and bad. Not being right by the kitchen, but also multiple storage areas in the house.

 

Hubby built this one to go in a narrow walkway & I LOVE it! The only thing I'd change is to add a little ramp of sorts, a triangular piece of wood at the bottom/back corner to help dispense the cans a bit. My enchilada sauce cans are hard to get out sometimes.

Deep shelves are great use of space but can be a challenge when it comes to rotating small cans. For commercially canned veggies I keep the cardboard box they're in at the grocery that holds a dozen cans. I stack the cans in the box & stack the boxes on top of each other. On my shelves, I can store 2 boxes deep & 3 high. I use hard plastic magazine organizers for boxes of spaghetti & cans of tomato paste to make them easier to sort, use the vertical space, & keep them from tipping over. You can cut up cereal boxes or whatever & put in the front to better utilize the space in the front of the magazine holders you're using for tomato paste.

Even though we've been prepping for a long time, it seems the needs for our food storage are always changing & there's always some change that needs to be made.

 

That's exactly the rack that's on my to-do list!

 

Pick up glass?? I have bungee cords across the edges of my shelves. The way things are built around here I'll be picking my house up off the ground. A good shake will knock the piers and blocks right out from under it.

 

Love the idea but would have to scale it down in size to fit here.

 

I agrea bugoutbob. I plan on doing the same here, but in a smaller scale.

 

We used these when we were figuring out what we really needed and wanted. There a different variations of these. They also make good gifts to nudge you non prepping family.

We'll I couldn't load a photo, but what we use are the plastic or wire organizers for soda cans they also hold most food size cans.