# Pantry Ideas



## PreparedRifleman73 (Nov 2, 2012)

First of all, you are all amazing sources of knowledge and I appreciate all the help!

So I am finally getting my wife on board with the ideas of prepping and self sufficiency. We want to start on food preps, but I want to show her that it can be organized and not take up tons of room. Here is our current pantry area now (with one of our little preppers holding the door open).









It has a solid oak door, 36" wide and the standard 6'8" height. Pantry is 8' tall, 42" wide and 24" deep.

What are your thoughts to use every inch of it? I can build new shelves, utilize what I have or add on some things like can organizers. We certainly can't buy a big shelf reliance unit though.

Our goals & requirements:
*Must have an area to store a few wine bottles
*Must have an area to store a few bags of dog food
*Mostly can storage, we don't use #10s either
*I am a licensed carpenter also and able to build whatever

I understand this won't be sufficient for true SHTF, but we want to start somewhere. Thanks!


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

Adjust the heights of the shelves so you can make them just high enough for certain sized cans or stacks of cans with no empty space. 

Wine bottles(if they have corks) need to be on their sides so the corks are kept wet so they could be placed on the same shelves as cans without much loss of space.

Add more shelves and eliminate as much dead space as possible.

Dont forget about "Prepper Furniture", you can get a lot of things stored that way.


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## sailaway (Mar 12, 2009)

Great start, Work on filling the pantry up with the canned & boxed foods, Will a 3 month supply fit in there? Move any soaps & cleaning agents under the sinks. (CHILD PROOF THE CHEMICALS) if your little preppers are inclined to open things up. 

Are you in an apartment or a house with a basement? Build shelves and fill them up, Maybe keep dog food in the coat closet. I have a year supply for my Lab @ 1#/day.

You might want to have vitamins to suppliment a canned food diet. If you are in a climate that is warm now start a garden, or get some planters and grow tomatoes & peppers or what ever in them. Plant an apple tree in your back yard if you have one. Get a spare can of gass for your grill. You might also buy some candles. Just a few thoughts to help you keep going, Sail


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## drissel (Oct 23, 2011)

Not sure if you have the space between door and shelves, but I have a shoe rack, pouch type hanging on my door and I place sauce packets in them...


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## PreparedRifleman73 (Nov 2, 2012)

Davarm said:


> Dont forget about "Prepper Furniture", you can get a lot of things stored that way.


That's right! Right now, I'm just trying to get my wife into this whole idea. I think shows like "Doomsday Preppers" have labeled certain activities as "crazy" like the prepper furniture. But I'm confident that once she sees how nice this pantry can be, she'll let me do that kind of stuff!



drissel said:


> Not sure if you have the space between door and shelves, but I have a shoe rack, pouch type hanging on my door and I place sauce packets in them...


Awesome idea! The wife has 4 of those shoe racks and not even enough shoes in the house to fill one.



sailaway said:


> Are you in an apartment or a house with a basement? Build shelves and fill them up, Maybe keep dog food in the coat closet. I have a year supply for my Lab @ 1#/day.


It is a home we own (15 year mortgage on a 7 year old house and we're 23, whoop whoop!) I like the idea of dog food in the coat closet. Maybe I can stack bags on the floor, build a shelf over it, and then our shoes will be up off the ground a bit.



sailaway said:


> You might want to have vitamins to suppliment a canned food diet.


That's a good idea. I should buy so many vitamins each time I buy cans or I know it'd be easy to "put off" until later haha.



sailaway said:


> If you are in a climate that is warm now start a garden, or get some planters and grow tomatoes & peppers or what ever in them. Plant an apple tree in your back yard if you have one. Get a spare can of gass for your grill. You might also buy some candles. Just a few thoughts to help you keep going, Sail


I'm in Minnesota, brrr haha. Our plan is to have another kid, wife can quit her job and stay home to garden and such. I do have a compost pile started. The kids and I planted and Apple tree and a Cherry tree this spring. I have stocked up on Propane too for the grill. I still love to grill in the winter. And the wife has gotten me into candles too!

*You guys are FULL of great ideas. You have given me new ideas and reinforced any good ones I currently have. AWESOME!*


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## mamak (Nov 28, 2012)

There is a recent thread called $10 preps. I can't remember off the top of my head who started it but it's got a lot of great ideas, especially for us new preppers. Also, since I see your little one there - there are great threads about prepping with kids/babies. Like, ideas of things to put in their BOB's and stuff like that. 
Love this forum!


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

This is very much the size of my kitchen pantry. My shelving is adjustable and set so I can put one or two layers of cans on a shelf. One shelf is taller for cereal etc. I have double doors and have built shelves wide enough to hold a row of cans. I try to place single cans and lighter weight items on the door. The trick is to arrange things so as to be able to see it all, the door shelving really helps for this. Larger heavy items like flour, sugar, and rice I put on the floor.

My cousin had a pantry with three or four layers of shelving hung on the doors. It was set up with piano hinges and would fold out like an accordion. This thing was beautiful and you could see everything.


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## farright (Mar 25, 2010)

hey minnesota nice to know i am not the only crazy prepper here west central nd border keep pluging away you will get there


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## PreparedRifleman73 (Nov 2, 2012)

I looked into some of the can organizers, particularly the ones that are similar to pop cases. But I can store about triple the amount of cans if I just stack them. Does anyone have any tricks for simple stacking and still being able to rotate? It seems like I'd rather have triple the food and a few expired cans than just a few cans that are rotating.


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## kappydell (Nov 27, 2011)

rather than purchase can rotation systems, just change your shelving for cans. Nail a lip on the front end, and put the shelves in at a slant. Put new cans in back, the others (stored on their sides) will roll down nicely, for those who like that kind of thing. Id put a lip on the front of the shelves anyway, if you live in an area where you get earthquake tremors (it helps keep the cans on the shelves when things get to rockin & rollin). If you prefer to stack (like I do) a pull-out tray is nice so you can put new things in back more easily. Some like a lazy susan turntable for their stacks, too. For longer term storage (seasonal, for example) I like the preppers platform bed:
Make a rectangular frame slightly taller than your storage pails of choice. Put plywood cut to fit, on top of the frame to hold your mattress. In the void you can fit quite a few pails. Once you varnish, paint, or otherwise decorate your frame it looks quite elegant. If you want to get fancy, attach some pieces of board with handles attached to make fake 'drawers'.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

hawkmiles said:


> I looked into some of the can organizers, particularly the ones that are similar to pop cases. But I can store about triple the amount of cans if I just stack them. Does anyone have any tricks for simple stacking and still being able to rotate? It seems like I'd rather have triple the food and a few expired cans than just a few cans that are rotating.


I buy may items in multipacks i.e. vegetables 12 cans per case or soup 8 or 10 cans in a shrink wrap. I date the outside packaging and open on a first in first out plan. This also allows me to see how close my estimation is to actual consumption. All items are dated for the above reasons. Also rearranging cases is faster than individual cans.


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## Meerkat (May 31, 2011)

All be on lookout for little bugs with wings,don't know what they are but tey came from grocery store awhile back,maybe in oatmeal,not sure.We had to throw away lots of packaged foods to get rid of them,they had laid cocoon type eggs in anything that was paper or cardboard.Even the plastic baggies seals they had eggs.

Now all our food except cans and jars goes into 1 or 2 gallon plastic bags and we keep a watch on it,hope we got rid of them though,have'nt seen any lately.


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## Caribou (Aug 18, 2012)

Meerkat said:


> All be on lookout for little bugs with wings,don't know what they are but tey came from grocery store awhile back,maybe in oatmeal,not sure.We had to throw away lots of packaged foods to get rid of them,they had laid cocoon type eggs in anything that was paper or cardboard.Even the plastic baggies seals they had eggs.
> 
> Now all our food except cans and jars goes into 1 or 2 gallon plastic bags and we keep a watch on it,hope we got rid of them though,have'nt seen any lately.


You might try putting your dry goods into the freezer for a couple weeks to kill the bugs. If you are going to store these for a long time you might also want to put a little dry ice in your bucket as the eggs will not hatch in a CO2 atmosphere.


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## tsrwivey (Dec 31, 2010)

hawkmiles said:


> I looked into some of the can organizers, particularly the ones that are similar to pop cases. But I can store about triple the amount of cans if I just stack them. Does anyone have any tricks for simple stacking and still being able to rotate? It seems like I'd rather have triple the food and a few expired cans than just a few cans that are rotating.


Keep at leat 2 rows of each item, old gets used from the right side, new goes in on the left. When you use all the old row, scoot the new row over in its place & start again. We have some shelves that are 3 ft deep & not so easy to get to so that's our solution for them.


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