New Shelves For The Pantry

I've started to kit out my dream pantry.

First job is to make up some shelves. These need to be heavy duty and look nice. I decided against buying adjustable shelves as I've never been that impressed and they don't have the right look for what I'm going for.

I made these from 3x2 cls which is about the cheapest timber you can buy but still looks okay when you rub the sander over it a few times. The base of the shelves is 18mm ply which sits in a rebate. Hopefully this should never move or flex no matter how much I store on it!

The video above shows what I made and how I did it. If you watch it please let me know what you think. I've made a few more bits since then and I'm pleased with how the room is shaping up!

Apple Storage Rack

I made a load of fruit crates a while ago that stack together to store our apple harvest. 

These have been great in some ways. It gives a good airy store place and allows apples to sit for a long time. The downside is that because they stack you can only access the top tray. I wanted something a bit different, more like drawer unit. I'd seen many online but wanted something a bit bigger to fit the space I had.

Floor To Ceiling Storage

Storage is always an issue with us. We never seem to have enough. 

It's got a whole lot worse since having children. The picture above shows just their craft supplies - one of their favourite activities.

Mouldy Squash

I hate food waste, that's one of the reasons I'm trying to be more organised with our food storage (the other being I'm tight). So I was a little annoyed the other day when I could see some our our squash harvest going bad.

It happens so quick and before you know it the mould has spread.

Squash normally keep really well, but they need the right environment to keep for a long time. Normally we store them in a box in the dining room, and we find that at room temperature they keep well into May and last year we even had them store into August.

Where mouldy squashes have touched, I'll have to use these fairly soon or they'll go off as well.

 Last seasons crop was so big that we didn't have the space to keep them all in the dinning room, so I stored some in the shed and workshop. The conditions in there are much colder and we're beginning to see the affects from that. Some squash are starting to go mouldy and because I've got them packed in tight together (which I know I shouldn't, be needs must) this mould spreads really fast. The other day I chucked out half a dozen squash and a large one went to the chickens (it was on the turn but they didn't complain). 

Wasted food - only good for the compost bin now.

It goes to show the importance of good food storage and the importance of checking your stored food. I knew I'd have problems storing them where I had them but I had no other choice. My long term plan is to build a "food storage shed" built out of block with different areas to store the different produce that I grow; there's no point in growing it if you can't use it before it goes off. The shed will ideally be thermostatically controlled and heavily insulated with adjustable ventilation and completely rodent proof - I'm hoping to start building it this year so watch this space!

I think that food storage is one of the key points on the road to self sufficiency. In the past how good you were at it would have directly dictated your families future, especially at this time of year when you'd see your food reserves start to diminish. 

Anyone else lost food this season due to poor storage? Time for some confessions!

List Of A Years Worth Of Food?

I've just finished reading a book called "Our Year In The Wilderness" by Michael & Susan Cusack. I brought it from a second hand bookshop in the summer, and although it looked dated (from the 80's) I thought it looked up my street and for £1 it was worth a shot.

The book was brilliant, it's about a couple being sponsored by Australian Geographic to spend a year in the wilderness in the Australian outback, in the North west of the Kimberley. They were chosen out of 500 other couples, but they kept a secret from National Geographic - they'd been separated for the last 4 years out of their 14 year marriage and saw the experience as a chance to reconcile their marriage! 

The area they stayed is well known for for being an inhospitable and difficult to live place, with long dry spells and temperatures reaching up to 45 degrees C and high humidity.

I was captivated by this book and found their constant struggle for water and relief from the flies and mosquitoes really interesting. It's written by both of them and luckily they both write really well and their are hundreds of beautiful pictures with captions so you really get a feel for what's going on. On Google maps I think their location and it was roughly here, you can see it's pretty remote! But although they know it was hard to survive where they did for a year, they had the up most respect for aborigines who had lived here for centuries before the settlers relocated them and took them from their own land, supposedly for their own good!

Below is a few pages I've pulled from the appendix of the book detailing what food supplies they took with them for their year in the wild. They supplemented their food with some meat they shot (although not much) and fish they caught, plus they grew some vegetables, although they understandably struggled growing them with the lack of water and the high heat!

These pictures should enlarge if you click on them.

There's a few things in the list I was shocked at. One was the amount of sugar they took with them, just one 1kg bag of sugar. Although they had honey and drink powder that wouldn't be enough sugar to keep me going for a month let alone a year! Also you'd think they'd be better off taking grain and a small mill rather than all the flour which could (and did) go bad in the heat. I also understand the need to keep the weight down but dried food without much water can be difficult, I do like all the herbs and spices they took with them though, a great way to change boring meals.

What do you think to their years worth of food for living in a hot and inhospitable place? 

What major changes would you make to the list?

Can Rotator Prototype

As any one that reads this blog knows, our house isn't massive. So I'm always looking for new storage solutions and lately I've been looking at making some can rotators for the pantry. This is so we can keep a better stock of cans and always use the oldest first.

My prototype model

 The idea is to make a door for our under stairs cupboard that contains all of our canned goods and rotates the stock for us as well (few things annoy me more than wasting food). The door will be made out of ply and have six rows of cans on the front, and use a castor to help it open smoothly.

Pull the oldest can out first and new ones go in the top

The prototype works well and is ideal for screwing to the wall and keeping a dozen cans in and although it looks basic it would be great for someone to keep tinned dog food in their garage.

I thought I'd post this up here and see if anyone else has any ideas for can rotators or any links I should look at for inspiration? Cheers for your help guys!

Building In Extra Storage

The other weekend I had a bit of a frenzy on putting in shelves and extra storage. After being at home in the week full time, I could really see where we were lacking storage and where it might make life a little easier.

More storage in the airing cupboard - somewhere to keep all the towels. They all come out easily if I need access to the tank..

Not the prettiest shelf above the fridge but it doubles the storage for all our Tupperware and tins

A shelf across a window that we never use. A better use of the space we think!

Shelve above the door. A shelf that only I can reach! (Man that wall needs some more paint)!

Tins and jar storage (the bottom shelf was added recently the others added when we moved in)

We don't live in the biggest house, but I like to think we're making the most of the space we have. When we build the extension hopefully we'll be able to incorporate some clever use of space and storage for essential things like food and linen.  

Anyone else been adding storage in random places lately?

Loft Boarded

Back in January I fitted a new loft hatch so we could get into our loft easily. Since then I've put a few things up there but I've been holding out on using it much until I got it boarded out - not a job I was looking forward to!

 This Saturday came and my usual Saturday work was cancelled so I thought I might as well get it done. I didn't want to board the whole thing, just an area down the middle so some boxes could be stored up there.

The main problem was the insulation. Ours is quite thick and laid double thickness. I first had to roll the top layer back and add some 4x2s running perpendicular to the joist. Once these were fixed in place I relaid the insulation between the timbers (this way it's not being squashed so doesn't loose it's efficiency) before laying the boards.

Three bloody great tanks made out of galv steel about 1/4" thick - no chance of getting these down until I do something major to the roof!

 It took about half a day to do all this but I did have a mate round for an hour just to pass the boards up to me.

This means that baby stuff can now be on rotation a little more rather than just hanging around while we wait for baby number two to grow into it! Also some of my old books are going up here because I will be soon loosing the spare room as my office due to having more people than we do rooms!

A good storage space but one we need to be careful that we don't keep things up there just for the sake of keeping them!

Storing Apples

I've been collecting a lot of apples lately but we can only collect what we can store. Fresh food storage at our place at the moment is relatively none existent, but my mother has a great unheated room that she keeps things like apples and potatoes in all winter.

Easy to spot fruit that's gone bad

 The cooking apples on the bottom two racks (Scotch Bridget) will even keep until April/May like this on these simple racks, whereas the Cox on top won't last that long because they will have been eaten long before that! We only bother to store prefect fruit as any blemish or damage makes the fruit rot a lot faster.

Large shelves I built for my mum to store her old apples racks on.



So this got me wondering how does everyone else store their apples over winter? I've lot's of old books that cover the subject and one day I'd love to build a proper store for apples. Storing your produce is probably as key to self sufficiency as anything and there is little point to me having so many apple trees if I can stop the fruit from rotting!

Storage Problems

I think that most modern families have a common problem - not enough storage. We certainly do.



Just a tiny selection of some of our books!



Our little girl is growing up so quick and getting through clothes at a rate of knots, but as we want more children we don't want to throw any of these clothes away. I have been taking some to my mothers in plastic boxes as well as some of the toys she's grown out of. The trouble is I can see mothers patience running thin as I try to hide another box in her house.

Tiny little loft hatch - not good for much!

I'd like to keep this stuff here if I could, but there's a big problem - or rather a small one. We've got a tiny little loft hatch.

It takes some squeezing through, so large boxes of baby clothes and car seats have got no chance. I finally decided to do something about it when I was putting the decorations away and having to "launch" them through the hole!

I bought a complete loft hatch with its own ladder, sprung loaded and insulated hatch. they're good qualitity and I fitted five of these in the same house i was working at last year so I knew what I was doing. With today's near blizzard conditions I decided to get it fitted.

The new, all singing, all dancing loft hatch!

Now I've got the hatch fitted I'm going to board out the middle section of the loft (I'll raise the floor up so it won't squash the insulation) and fit a couple of lights (this will be another weekend not this one!). That way it will make it much easier to store all our baby stuff for future use and maybe things like camping gear and sewing stuff can go up there to, just coming down when we want to use it. By having the loft easily accessible it means it's not such a chore to go into it.

And before anyone says it  - don't worry I'm not going to overload my loft. All the weight will be spread (there's plenty of load bearing walls that finish in there as well) and nothing of any real weight will be stored in there. Also our roof isn't a modern truss roof designed to the minimum requirements, ours was built at the end of the forties, things were always over engineered then and the ceiling joists seem substantial for the spans (trust me I'm a carpenter...).

Anyone else got any storage solutions? We still need more - books mainly but we don't believe in hiding them away!