Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Tackle It Tuesday - Food Storage Cabinets




This week I decided to tackle the food storage cabinets in basement. As you can see by my before pictures they had gotten rather disorganized. I tend to be a bit OCD so it was really bothering me.

To properly clean and organize my cabinets I decided to pull everything out, check the expiration dates and then put it all back where it belonged. I was surprised to find some old food in there that has expired over three years ago. Yikes!

While I was cleaning out I also decided to inventory the food I had on hand. The inventory is handy because I now know what foods I need to stock up on and which we already have plenty of. Right now that inventory is just handwritten in a spiral notebook. I have plans to type it up and start a better inventory system, but I haven't been able to figure out exactly how I want to work that. If anyone has a working system for inventorying their stockpile, please let me know. I would love to hear some ideas.

After the Cleaning and Organization:
The cabinets are much more organized now. The similar foods are grouped together. For example, all the pasta and pasta sauce are on one shelf, the chicken stock, veggies and tomatoes are on a shelf together, and so forth. The same foods are together with the older ones in the front so they can get used up first. But I didn't alphabetize the food. Sorry guys.
I am so glad that these cabinets are finally organized. It is such a relief to me. I also now realize that we are almost out of storage space for my stockpile. Part of that is from all the deals I got using triple coupons this week. I love triple coupons. We need to start using our stockpile more and buying less at the store for awhile.
To check out more tackles, head over to 5 Minutes For Mom.

6 responses:

The Proverbs Wife said...

Hello Holly,

Great tackle and thanks for the tip regarding keeping up with ECB's.

For my surplus food inventory, I use a four columned sheet of paper. One column for the item,the unit or weight, amount I need & the amount that I have.

The amount I need column let's me know when to stop buying that item or how many of those items to get when on sale.

This can be stored on a hanging clipboard, in your homemaking binder or taped inside of the cabinet door. I inventory my deep freezer and personal items/household pantry the same way.

Svr said...

What a wonderful Supply you have. I used to do that! Times have been too rough lately though our shelves are kinda bare. God will provide though..

You are very, very blessed!!!

Anonymous said...

Wow! I love looking at photos of stockpiles. I should take some of mine and share them.

Shynea @ Penny Pinching Diva said...

The cabinets really are so much more organized. You have quite a stockpile. My little stockpile is jealous. :) I need to tackle my cabinets, so I think I will do this tomorrow.

Anonymous said...

WAY COOL!! I am a little jealous. Okay, a lot jealous. It looks great. Great Tackle. Happy Thanksgiving

Bargain Briana said...

Your cabinets look well stocked and organized!