Food Storage for Cans

Even though I do a lot of canning, dehydrating, and freezing of my homegrown foods, I am not above buying canned goods from the store if I see a really great deal. However, I am a bit OCD when it comes to having my food storage area looking neat and tidy. I want everything in nice neat lines, with all cans turned in the same direction. I also want to be able to rotate the cans so nothing goes "bad". Which shouldn't be a problem right? Wrong!! I evidently have a terrible time with rotating the canned goods.

The first thing I tried for rotation of the cans was to turn my shelves perpendicular to the wall, and space the sets of shelves far enough apart from each other that I would have access to either side of the shelving. That way, I could remove the oldest cans from one side of the shelves, and put in the new stuff on the shelf on the opposite side. That worked for about a month. Then the old and new stuff started to get mixed together.

Then I started using the above method with the addition of writing the date of purchase on top of the can, so I could make sure I was using the oldest cans first with just a glance. Which worked wonderful until I started stacking the cans. The newer cans would get stacked on top of the older cans and things just got messed up.

I finally tried something that I saw on Pinterest. It was using an empty cardboard soda pop box to store cans in. The idea is that you store the cans in the box on their sides with the front of the box cut out for easy storage and can removal. While I ended up making a slight modification to what was shown on Pinterest, overall this method has worked out really well for me.

What you will need and what to do: 

• An empty box for canned beverages
• Strapping tape
• Scissors
• Wrapping paper (optional...This is just the OCD in me that wants everything to look neat and tidy and if everything looks uniformed, it looks tidy.So I use the same wrapping paper to make all storage boxes look the same.)
• Labels (optional)
• Pen

• Cut out the front of the box as pictured above.

• Cover all seams of the box with strapping tape to reinforce the strength of the box to help it keep from tearing from the weight of the cans.
• If you are not going to cover your box with wrapping paper, you are done. Place cans in box, laid on their sides.

•  If want to wrap your box, cover with wrapping paper. Label so you will know the contents, Place cans in the box and you are done.

Thanks for reading and visiting my blog. :-)