Purging & Organization - Long Term Food Storage

 

 

I have wanted to redo my LTFS area for quite a while now.  At first I didn’t want to spend any money to store and organize my grocery stockpile and home canning, but so far my attempts to make do with what I had just wasn’t cutting it.  I’d been shopping around for a shelf unit off and on this summer, but the prices were too high for me until this past week when I was able to get a heavy duty garage storage shelving unit from Amazon for half price.

 

I've been ready to do something with this spot for a while

It was the perfect width and height to fit in the space I had in mind in the downstairs bedroom so that in itself was almost as good as the $65 price tag.  It shipped for free right to my front door which was great because it was pretty heavy and I did have to put it together.  I took my time, even read the instruction sheet and it was really easy to assemble, no complaints about that.

 

Perfect fit!

Everything out of the bedroom closet, out of boxes and onto shelves

While I am a cricket (that’s my organization style) and prefer to have things put away in micro-organized categories and out of sight I realized that it wasn’t working so well for me as far as my groceries go.  I seem to need to see at a glance what I have on hand or else I tend to forget I have it.  I don’t want my groceries sitting out on a countertop or anything, but if I can just open a door and see my stuff all neatly lined up on a shelf then that is perfect for me.  I also need space to move things around and rotate my stock.  Since I’m not currently using the downstairs bedroom for anything other than storage at the moment, it just made sense to get a sturdy shelving unit and set it up in there so I can have some much better organization.

 

A nice mix of my home canned items and store bought

Dry goods with my freeze dried and dehydrated foods on top
They're are the lightest so I thought that was a good place for them

Once I got the shelving assembled and into place it was time to put my stockpile of groceries on it.  I pulled everything out, sorted through to see if there was anything I wanted to get rid of (I found two boxes of mac & cheese to donate) and then I started putting things away.  As per my usual, I organized my items “like with like” as that makes the most sense to me.

 

So far I love it!

All my hard work canning and stocking up this year is really going to pay off.  I’m definitely ready for the winter, probably well into spring and summer, truth be told.  I will have plenty of healthy options to use to prepare my meals and lots of variety as well so I won’t get bored.  I have a lot of great meals in mind to prepare as the weather changes and temperatures cool down.  I’ll let you know how this new system works out and I’ll share some of the meals I’ll be making as well.