Storage of emergency supplies in your home

better inside than outside

What will damage food storage the most is heat. High temperatures will drastically shorten the shelf life of the food you have stored. The best place to store food is in a climate-controlled area with relatively low temperatures and no light. It basically comes to mind, but most people don’t have this luxury. Look for places in your home where the temperature stays well below 80 degrees, and even below 70 degrees if possible.

Let’s look at some good places to store supplies inside your home:

look up

My lovely girlfriend is rather short compared to me. Therefore, she cannot reach the highest shelves anywhere in the house. We make the most of shelves 3 and 4 in our kitchen and laundry cabinets to store food cans and jars. We can store dozens and dozens of cans/jars on these higher shelves and leave plenty of room for everyday items that she can reach.

In your cabinets, look at how much space you have at the top. We have seen where you could place another row of shelves at the top of the door to store additional items. Here, we opt for lighter items like paper products or packaged foods like boxed macaroni and cheese.

look down

Under beds is the first logical place to look. Depending on the height of your beds, you should certainly be able to store cans and pint jars under your beds. Quarter jars need a bit more headroom, but are still possible with some beds. We have been able to fit 30 cases of pint jars under our bed with ease. The number you can get will depend on the size and height of your bed.

Look in your closets under your hanging clothes. Your hanging clothes usually do not touch the floor. There is usually enough space to store cans/jars on the floor and still room to hang clothes.

Look under and behind your sofa. This is an often overlooked area for storing items.

look outside your house

This is the place to store items other than food. For us, we have used our garage area for items that are not damaged by heat. Paper products, water, tents and camping items. We also store our cooking and outdoor baths (cubes) on shelving in the garage.

Shelving is the key to organizing your garage. Go high with your long-term storage items. We use cable shelving that bolts to the studs on the garage walls. Each shelf is valued at hundreds of pounds.

You could even go with a storage building to store your supplies. While this is an added expense that may not be for everyone, you could take advantage of this for your outdoor storage.

The best idea for storage supplies

When we built our house, we added a bedroom size room just for our storage pantry. We added shelving that is 4 feet wide, 2 feet deep, and 6 feet tall. Each unit has 5 shelves each. This gives us a huge storage capacity with each unit.

We are able to control the amount of light coming into the room and the temperature is never higher than 76 degrees.

We can stack items up to the 9-foot ceilings in this room. This gives us enough food storage space to keep 1 shelf for our daily use and the rest of the shelves for our long term food storage.

This opportunity to store supplies may not be available to everyone. I mention it to give you an idea of ​​what is possible and something to aspire to.

Do what you can with the space you have. You will be amazed at what you can achieve if you pursue the opportunities you have.