Featured Pantry Ideas

I have something very similar to that for my rolling shelves. Its great cause you can put the shelves where you need them. The shelving themselves hold a lot of weight with no problem. We also have them in the deli I work. Have about 400 lbs worth of meat and cheeses on multiple shelves and the store has been open for about 14 years now, using the original shelving. At home, I put the bulkier items on those types, like my five gallon buckets, oils, coffee cans, ect.

 

We have the commercial wire shelving (from restaurant surplus) in the garage and in my shop. It is six feet high and 5 feet wide with 24 inch deep shelves. I will be adding the wall mounted racks and 20 inch deep wood shelves for more adjustable shelves like we have in the pantry and spare bedroom. I heat and cool both the garage and shop so we don't worry about freezing or high temps in the summer.
I don't live in earthquake country any more but everything taller than 3 feet gets anchored to the walls. Habits like that are hard to break.

 

Put a dehumidification device in place.

 

one square foot of shelf will hold nine quart jars. That said, my last serious store room was in an unheated root cellar, very damp. I used Wal-Mart plastic shelves, the 4-high Plano ones (wanted to avoid rusting metal shelves or molding wood ones. They worked like a champ, and each shelf held one case (12 cans) of canned food, which I got from the local canning company for $6 a case. Rotation was simple, I just wrote on each cardboard box what was inside, and when it was put in. Rust on cans (under humid conditions) controlled by a light coat of mineral oil. All I can say was with the mineral oil (just enough to show a fingerprint when cans were handled) is that canned goods remained good to eat 6 years, without it they rusted in three years. The plastic shelves were cheap, readily available when I needed more, and I am still using them after 12 years. They also come apart for easy transportation and storage. For taller items, I put them on the top shelves. Dry goods were stored in mylar with oxy absorbers, in pails. Since the temp of the storeroom, even outdoors and unheated, hovered between 48 and 58 degrees at all times (I know because I had a hi-low thermometer and checked it) even when summer temps were 100 degrees and winters were -20 degrees. I sure miss that root cellar! Thinking of putting one in where I live now, even if I have to hand dig the darn thing. Oh yes, I use those plastic shelves in my current pantry/store room. (Since they are in the dark, the issue of the plastic degrading due to UV exposure is moot.) It's kinda small (10 x 10), but I love it just the same.

 

I have my glass jars in low cardboard boxes- the kind the jars come in when you buy them (or cut some down. Then I cut pieces of cardboard and slip them between the jars to act as dividers so that they don't rattle against each other if there's a big shake.

 

I have also heard using old socks cut up to put around jars and glass ware so they don't rattle and crash

 

Living in quake prone land we have our home canned jars only one one jar high with a wide adjustable front wood bar to keep the jars from being shaken out in a quake. We have cardboard dividers between rows of jars or we heed the jars in the original boxes with card board dividers. The shelves are bolted to the wall studs. We take the rings off the jars since it makes it easier to check if a lid has failed. The lowest shelf is five gallon bucket height, then two two shelves of jars, the one to two shelves of lighter weight products in totes and bins. We rotate food stuff with newest purchased in the back of shelves.

 

If you have the room, put a 2 sided shelf in the middle of the room... made good use of empty space