It's been a long week.
I've been going through our pantry and reserve food supplies, checking the expiry dates of everything, discarding what's too long expired, and buying new stocks to replace what we've used up. It's been a busy time, and my back's letting me know it didn't appreciate all the standing, bending, lifting, and packing that's been going on. Still, it's almost done now. Our two pantry cupboards are pretty well organized, a box of long-out-of-date food has been trashed, another box of still-within-usable-date food is ready to go to the food pantry, and several heavy bags of cans have been packed into our ready-use pantry. Reserve foods have been rearranged, new additions vacuum-sealed and packed into containers, and things are looking a lot more usable.
It's a good idea to do this once every year. Unfortunately, we've let it slip two years in a row due to other commitments, or illness, or whatever, so our pantry had gotten rather disorganized. It's good to have put it right again . . . but it was a lot of work. Must do better next year!
BTW, Commander Zero had a very useful tip for storing batteries with, but not in, devices that need them (thereby avoiding problems with leaking batteries over time). I already have some of the Storacell battery containers he recommends, and have found them very useful.
If I'm going to tie them to appliances that need them, as he suggests, I must buy some more. Fortunately, they're not very expensive.
Peter
6 comments:
Interesting storage capability. I'm going to look into those too.
RE: food storage - two things that help a lot are FIFO storage for cans and vacuum-packing non-canned food. I looked at FIFO and settled on their Cansolidator Pantry system (they now have a larger Pantry Plus); it's rather spendy (I've had it for years, from back when the Pantry was on sale for about $21 - it's now $45). The advantage is one can "build-to-size" to fit whatever space one has available, and it does make canned FIFO much, much easier. Pro Tip: keep a Sharpie handy because you still want to put the purchase date on the can.
As for vac-pack, a Food Saver with some 8.5" and 11.0" bag rolls work well, although over a couple years the bags will allow some air molecules to enter. Which is why mylar bags were invented. The usual technique is put food items (or bulk food like rice) in the bag, insert an oxygen absorber or two, seal the bag. For very long term storage one can use the Food Saver (or any vacuum pump) to extract the air from the bag before sealing (still use the oxy absorber), and the anal retentive/OCD among us can use nitrogen to first purge the air in the bag before vacuuming.
5-6 gallon bags are available for use with 5-7 gallon buckets, but smaller is often better; I use a lot of 1 gallon mylar bags for individual items (ex: for store-bought mac and cheese the contents of the cardboard box, including the "cheese" pouch, go into a Food Saver roll bag, get vacuumed, then 4 of those go into a 1 gallon mylar bag which is vacuumed and an oxy absorber inserted before sealing). Pro Tip: Mylar is slick, so info written on the mylar bag with a Sharpie will wear off; common masking tape or freezer tape makes a better label.
BTW, batteries can be vac-packed as well - but be aware that mylar is conductive - and the Storacells are the Bees' Knees for managing "ready use" or "spare go-with" batts.
Oops - I didn't identify that the Cansolidator FIFO storage stuff comes from ThriveLife dot com.
If you store the typical alkaline battery at room temperature the best use lifetime will be about a year (though 9v batteries are worse).
However, if you put them in the fridge the lifetime goes up to 10 years for alkaline and also improves for all other types.
Info found on an electronics site, unfortunately I can't find a link.
Regards
Stay far away from Duracell, as they changed the chemical formula, and they now randomly fail by puking their guts, damaging the item. They also don't last as long, in storage or use. Absolute junk. They took the best reputation and trashed it. Idiots.
Kirkland is similar, but not as bad, perhaps.
Don't feel bad, just threw out a package of frozen green beans.
Use by Jan 2017.
Really bad considering we moved at the end of 2017
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