What do I DO with all this FOOD?? Why make this brilliant storage place, of course!

Good morning to you!

As soon as I saw Sharon's storage cabinet go up on the Canning for Christians site on Facebook, I absolutely knew I had to convince her to get on here and share it with you.

Many of you have learned you can set aside space, use buckets to hold grains and loose items, reserve a closet or shelf for stuff, possibly even make new end tables and coffee tables out of buckets for storage. Many of you have even come up with under bed storage that is amazing. I mean, face it, we are one creative bunch right? You have proved that to me over and over in YOUR suggestions that have come across the comments on so many pieces I have written.

But Sharon's, well, I think this one takes the cake.

It solves the whole issue of stacking.

It solves the whole issue of rotating.

It can hold as many cans as you want, and consolidates space.

You can make it MOVEABLE.

The Handy Hubby has already received his directives that this is the next best thing we are getting around here, (cue the eye roll), but that seeing how it works, he also thought it was totally and completely awesome.

In honor of this amazing find and sweet, willing spirit to share,

 I give you Sharon...in her own words.

• After many years of being frustrated with my fiance's very old house and the clutter building up and consuming the kitchen space, I decided that something had to change.  
• First I put together a prefab china hutch and used the top for our coffee hutch, coffee cups on top shelf, coffee maker, coffee, sweetener, creamer, teas and hot chocolate on the main shelf. I used the bottom cabinet space for canned food storage. I was satisfied for a couple of years, however, canned goods were being pushed to the back and getting lost and my fiance was bringing home more cans than he had space for, this led to canned goods being lost in the kitchen. A waste of space and was very time consuming trying to find what you needed. 
• I, being the innovator and liking to tinker, searched for canned food rotators. I saw the video for the Shelf Reliance system and knew that I could not afford over $400 for a shelving system. Using some ideas for individual can rotators (I built some of these for my pantry shelves, and they are a pain in the rear. Yes, they work, but for the amount of time invested with building the individual boxes, I could have built two of these full systems) I searched the net and found this http://www.wikihow.com/Build-a-Rotating-Canned-Food-Shelf , and decided that enough was enough and got busy building this for my fiance so we could make his kitchen as efficient as possible. 

• I did modify the unit so I could made a drawer for the bottom that holds about 45 medium sized tuna, or chicken. I used craft board from Lowes so I could make sure the boards were straight, I used the 1/2 trim pieces to go between the cans and glued and screwed them on. I don't have mad carpentry skills, but love to try. This project took me 4 days to complete and should last a lifetime, or two or three. 

• Tips and pointers? Glad you asked! Do NOT try to retro fit a drawer, it takes a lot of patience and time and frustration. This has casters on the bottom, please make sure your holes are lined up even. I had to make notches on the back bottom side of the drawer for the drawer to be able to be pulled out and had to realign my casters. I glued trim pieces on the inside of the back to keep the cans in line once they come into contact with their designated slot on the forward rolling shelf, other wise they will get off and wreak havoc. Tools I used: T square, voted MVP for this project, drill, power driver, wrenches for the casters, a helper for an extra set of hands when needed

Here is the link again to this totally awesome plan, 

and Sharon also has a video on how it works.

Eye opening because it is so brilliant. If she can get it to me, and I can get it to work,

I will post it on here for you all to see this baby in action. :)

• Build a Rotating Food Storage Shelf

What are YOUR storage ideas????


Preview to Food Storage 101 series--9 excuses....

Day One: How to get started considering food storage...

Day two: The three most common Food Storage Mistakes....

Day three: Starting from scratch, building food storage turbo-style...

Day Four: Simple and Steady, Building Food storage gradually...