# Long term storage



## tweederlee (Oct 16, 2013)

I'm new to long term storage. If I'm going to start storing beans, grains, ect in 5gal food grade buckets. Is it as simple as just making sure they are clean, fill em up and close them. Or is there more to it. For example desiccant packs for moisture.


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## Moose33 (Jan 1, 2011)

For long term storage You'd be a lot better off storing in mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. It depends, in part, on your definition of long term. Never use oxygen absorbers with salt or sugar. You'll end up with rocks.

I'd really suggest you start with a plan. What are you storing for? How many people, how do you move it, if the need arises. Where are you going to store it? I found starting small worked well. Need pickles, get two. Need peanut butter, get two, and so on.

Start with a week, then a month, then three. You may be surprised how quickly it adds up. There are a lot of LDS websites that can help you out too.


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## JayJay (Nov 23, 2010)

Just pour those little suckers in, the bucket use 2 TB of DE at the bottom, in the middle, and on top, close the lid and label the food item and date stored.
You're finished--that easy.
I've had 5 years of storage and no issues and use my stores every week.
Don't forget your dry goods and baking goods to cook with.
I have 60 buckets of dry goods, etc.


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## JustCliff (May 21, 2011)

You will find here that there are different ways people do long term storage. Which one is right? What is the most correct answer? Do some reading of different storage methods and choose which one is right for your situation and the one you are most confident with. You have to have some peace of mind when it comes to what you have stored.
Having said that. I put my dried stores in 5 gal buckets and purge it with nitrogen. I do use smaller containers like 20oz and 2L bottles for salt and sugar. 
Light and heat are your enemies of food storage also you need to try and keep it as constant in temperature as you can.


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

Different people have different styles. Where you live can play into what will work for you. 

The main things to be aware of are the things that will harm your food, or limit its shelf life. Light, water, temperature, and air can all affect your food. You want to keep it in the dark, away from moisture, cool, and away from oxygen.

Some people use only mylar pouches. If you don't have any rodents and will never have any rodents, that may work. Some bugs can get into mylar as well. There have been devastating consequences for people who did not have a second layer for their food. 5 gallon buckets work well for a second layer. Some people just use a 5 gallon buckets. Mylar inside a bucket will help with light and oxygen. 

If you follow the store what you eat and eat what you store belief, having gamma seal lids on your buckets will make them much easier to get in and out of to get food. You can find gamma seal lids in the paint department of Home Depot. Many other places have gamma seal lids as well. They are a two part lid with a ring and a screw on lid. The lid has a gasket seal to give the lid a tight seal on your bucket.

JayJay told you about using diatomaceous earth in your food. It can keep bugs from growing and reproducing in your food and is safe for your food as well. Remember that the better the food, the more the bugs and rodents will like it as well. 

The LDS Storage Centers have food that is pre-canned in #10 cans. Cans are even safer than 5 gallon buckets for protection against rodents.

I suggest that you go into the threads under food storage and read the wealth of information in previous discussions. 

Oxygen absorbers help to preserve your food by removing oxygen. You can find these in many locations online.


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

tweederlee said:


> I'm new to long term storage. If I'm going to start storing beans, grains, ect in 5gal food grade buckets. Is it as simple as just making sure they are clean, fill em up and close them. Or is there more to it. For example desiccant packs for moisture.


It is also a matter of your needs. I am single with a puppy (she is actually a 2 year old female black lab, but still my puppy!). To open a 5 gallon pail of beans would mean eating beans fast for a long time!!! That or have 'pests' get into them before I can eat them all. I have two 5 gallon pails, sealed with beans, rice and other grains in them. They are in one pound packages, vacuum sealed, with O2 absorbers in the pail. Most of my preps are #10 cans or #1 packages vacuum sealed in a regular container, like a rubbermaid. For large groups, pails make sense, for singles they do not.

Take stock of what you would actually use and go from there. For example, how many pounds of 'beans' would you, or COULD you eat in a week, or a month? If you are unsure, buy a pound of whatever product you prefer and eat it. If you reconstitute a pound of beans, a single person will be eating that for a week.

I've discussed this before with folks here about me, being single, and having my stocks in #10 cans. They each hold 10 +- cups of product. That is about 10 meals, more or less, with veggies and additional stuff. Have you ever eaten the same thing for 10 or more meals? Could you?


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## airdrop (Jan 6, 2012)

I have added hand warmers to buckets to eat the O2 ,these I pickup a wallie world after hunting season when they go on sale. One hand warmer per bucket should do it .


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

Woody said:


> It is also a matter of your needs. I am single with a puppy (she is actually a 2 year old female black lab, but still my puppy!). To open a 5 gallon pail of beans would mean eating beans fast for a long time!!! That or have 'pests' get into them before I can eat them all. I have two 5 gallon pails, sealed with beans, rice and other grains in them. They are in one pound packages, vacuum sealed, with O2 absorbers in the pail. Most of my preps are #10 cans or #1 packages vacuum sealed in a regular container, like a rubbermaid. For large groups, pails make sense, for singles they do not.
> 
> Take stock of what you would actually use and go from there. For example, how many pounds of 'beans' would you, or COULD you eat in a week, or a month? If you are unsure, buy a pound of whatever product you prefer and eat it. If you reconstitute a pound of beans, a single person will be eating that for a week.
> 
> I've discussed this before with folks here about me, being single, and having my stocks in #10 cans. They each hold 10 +- cups of product. That is about 10 meals, more or less, with veggies and additional stuff. Have you ever eaten the same thing for 10 or more meals? Could you?


Woody, I have many 5 gallon buckets, and I am single. I use the gamma seal lids. You can get in your bucket, get what you want, and seal it back up. It doesn't work for me like it works for you, but we don't have lots of bugs here. Some people are bothered by the oxygen that you have now put in the bucket, but you can have another container such as a quart canning jar that you fill for short term use, and then put a new oxygen absorber in your bucket.

When I first got my gamma seal lids, I tried to use them and their colors for a color coded storage. I have buckets with wheat, black beans, rice, pintos, corn, potato flakes, pasta, sugar, salt. But I also have all of these in #10 cans that I got after I started food storage.

I like having both. I agree that the #10 cans are easier to use and use up. But not everyone has access to the #10 cans, and now that we cannot borrow the canners from the LDS Food Storage Center, some of us will only have 5 gallon buckets for storing any amount of food.


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## JayJay (Nov 23, 2010)

***I've discussed this before with folks here about me, being single, and having my stocks in #10 cans. They each hold 10 +- cups of product. That is about 10 meals, more or less, with veggies and additional stuff. Have you ever eaten the same thing for 10 or more meals? Could you?***

Exactly.... 

Which is why there is not one thing stored in my preps we don't eat.
I just bought at the grocery or Sam's, et al, foods we have eaten all our lives....well, not chef-boy-ardee ravioli, spaghetti and meatballs, and lasagna, but it was $.88¢!!


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## readytogo (Apr 6, 2013)

tweederlee said:


> I'm new to long term storage. If I'm going to start storing beans, grains, ect in 5gal food grade buckets. Is it as simple as just making sure they are clean, fill em up and close them. Or is there more to it. For example desiccant packs for moisture.


http://nchfp.uga.edu/
https://www.usaemergencysupply.com/information_center/storage_life_of_foods.htm#.UuB-L2co7mQ
http://www.family-survival-planning.com/long-term-food-shelf-life.html
This will give you some idea about storage and preservation, good luck.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

Another thing you will want to consider is "What Do You Consider Long Term"?

If you plan to store what you eat and rotate through your stores, the storage requirements wouldn't necessarily need to be the same as for 20 or 25 year storage. 

No need to use mylar and O2 absorbers when the food will be eaten before their normal shelf life will be reached, many foods will last quite a long time just sealed from outside air and stored in a cool dark place.


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## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

40 lbs of hard white winter wheat delivered from Costco.com is $44, that's difficult to beat if you already have a mill to turn it into flour. It comes in a gamma bucket and mylar bags sealed. 

I personally need to buy O2 absorbers and something better than my foodsaver to reseal vacuum bags, but for now, sitting unused as preps, they will do just fine!


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## Tacitus (Dec 30, 2012)

JustCliff said:


> You will find here that there are different ways people do long term storage. ... I put my dried stores in 5 gal buckets and purge it with nitrogen.


Where do you get your nitrogen? Is that something your average consumer can buy?


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## tweederlee (Oct 16, 2013)

Thanks everyone. I appreciate all the help!!!!


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

JayJay said:


> ***I've discussed this before with folks here about me, being single, and having my stocks in #10 cans. They each hold 10 +- cups of product. That is about 10 meals, more or less, with veggies and additional stuff. Have you ever eaten the same thing for 10 or more meals? Could you?***
> 
> Exactly....
> 
> ...


Just because I opened up a #10 can of beans or rice or oatmeal doesn't mean that I would eat it for all the next meals until it was gone, nor would it go bad. The same is true of 5 gallon buckets of dry foods.

I don't think that if I open a #10 can of oatmeal, beans, rice, or whatever that I am now obligated to eat it for the next x amount of meals until it is gone. It would be different if it was a wet packed food like peaches, soup, tuna. But something that is dry packed can last for many months after the #10 can is opened. This is why I have #10 cans for dry goods and use the smaller cans for wet packed foods.

Do people buy the 3# cylindrical tube of oatmeal in the stores and eat it for all the following meals until it is gone? Or, do people buy a bag or sugar or flour and now have to use it for all the following meals until it is gone? I don't and I don't know anyone who does.

The #10 cans have plastic lids that you can use after the metal can seal is opened.

Opening up dry goods is VERY different than opening up wet goods. That is why dry goods are often packed in 5 gallon buckets and #10 cans. If there was the common belief that you HAD to use it up fast now that you opened it, it would not be packed in such large containers.


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## ARDon (Jun 28, 2014)

we all do things a bit differently, but the results are the same. For "me" dry goods like beans, rice, noodles (egg ,rice), pasta's, dried peas (green split, black eyed, purple hull's) I store in vacuum bags. This works quite well for me: I wipe down the original package with a damp cloth and make a small in cut in the bag. I use 4mil plastic bags from large roll and seal 1 end. I insert the bag of dry good, inside the 4 mil bag, along with a 1 gal zip lock bag(for future storage) and roll off a vacuum bag (I prefer Uline Vacuum Bags) and vacuum seal the bags. I've been doing it this way for over 5 yrs and very rarely have leaks. I do a monthly check on my dry good that are vacuum sealed to check and make sure we are rotating our good. I date everything I do.

Ramen Noodles the wife and I have stocked cases of them in various flavors. We re-packed them in small mylar bags w/02 absorber labeling the case what flavor. We left them in the original package, just made a small cut into the package placing it & a 02 absorber in the mylar bag and vacuum sealed them. 

5gal food grade buckets we store bulk items in food grade buckets. I say in "for us" its a must to use food grade buckets w\ gamma lid's, we line ours with 6 gal mylar. Items we store in our buckets is All Purpose Floor (after it was in the freezer for 1 week to kill any weavels & larva). then we store them in the buckets still in their original packaging along with 1 gal zip lock bags. Sugar, corn meal (w\o freezing the packages) is done the same way, along with rice (white).

Dry Seal Jars we store most of our powdered items in 1\2 gal canning jars we vacuum seal these, 1 gal wide mouth glass jars w\plastic lids w\3" opening. These we do not vacuum seal, but use 02 absorber's in them. Naturally we label everything and date it. 

I have some say we do a over kill or spend too much money on making these items for long term. My answer is" we the wife & I enjoy prepping. Its a life style we choose to live 20 yrs ago. I feel it don't take any more time or effort to prepare than to can garden raised veggies, raising your own beef or taking & processing wild game. We the wife & I also look at our food storage as insurance, and investment to our lifestyle. As the saying goes, "What you put into your life is what you get from it." I look at prepping the same way.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Dakine said:


> 40 lbs of hard white winter wheat delivered from Costco.com is $44, that's difficult to beat if you already have a mill to turn it into flour.


walmart has 26 lb bucket s for $13.85 each
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Augason-Farms-Emergency-Food-Hard-White-Wheat-26-lb/22001478

Buy 4 of them (104 lbs) to make your $50 limit ($55.40) and its free shipping.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

Tacitus said:


> Where do you get your nitrogen? Is that something your average consumer can buy?


You can buy Dry Ice, which sublimates into CO2 and that works just as good.


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

Can we reuse MYLAR bags or are they a one time thing?
What can we use in place of Mylar bags?


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## Dakine (Sep 4, 2012)

LincTex said:


> You can buy Dry Ice, which sublimates into CO2 and that works just as good.


True! but be sure not put dry ice into an enclosed container. 




This reminds me of making MRE bombs...


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

crabapple said:


> Can we reuse MYLAR bags or are they a one time thing?
> What can we use in place of Mylar bags?


Yes, crabapple, you can reuse MYLAR bags. When you open one, make your opening cut very close to the seal so as to preserve as much of the bag as possible.

Some people take out a certain amount and reseal for the next time.

OrangeJeepDad stored all his food in Mylar, nothing else. He had a huge loss due to rodents, before a fire burned up his home.

http://orangejeepdad.blogspot.com/2013/10/our-first-country-problem-rodents.html


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## weedygarden (Apr 27, 2011)

Dakine said:


> 40 lbs of hard white winter wheat delivered from Costco.com is $44, that's difficult to beat if you already have a mill to turn it into flour. It comes in a gamma bucket and mylar bags sealed.
> 
> I personally need to buy O2 absorbers and something better than my foodsaver to reseal vacuum bags, but for now, sitting unused as preps, they will do just fine!


Here is a better deal.

http://providentliving.org/bc/conte...nter-order-form-usa-english-2014.pdf?lang=eng

5.5 pound of either white or red wheat for $3.05. That is 44 pounds for $24.40.

Order it online http://store.lds.org/webapp/wcs/sto...15839595_10557_3074457345616706370_-1__195792

33 pounds for $27.75. (a case of 6 cans)

Costco $1.10 versus LDS $.84 a pound.


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## LincTex (Apr 1, 2011)

weedygarden said:


> Here is a better deal.
> 
> 5.5 pound of either white or red wheat for $3.05. That is 44 pounds for $24.40.


The Auguson farms 26lb pails from walmart is still a better deal as long as you get 4 of them to get the free shipping offer


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