Friday, August 28, 2009

Organizing our Food Storage

Last week, I was finally able to find space for my food storage where I can actually get to it easily to use it; instead of having to sleep on it as we did in our last apartment. I only needed a couple shelves out of our hall closet to put my bottled food and one of each food in the #10 cans and PETE containers, then I can refill them when necessary.
This picture shows under our staircase. A lot of houses have hall closets under their stairs, which we do, but then our neighbor told us we should knock out the dry wall in that closet right underneath the slant of our stairs. So Glen knocked it out and now we have all this space to store our bulk food storage. I love being able to see and get to everything. So anyone with stairs, you may want to look into that for a cool space to store food.
Also under our stairs we filled up our water barrels and tucked them in there. It feels so good to finally have them full. I don't know if you can tell, but the barrels are on furniture movers with the wheels. Tim and Cara gave us the idea, which is brilliant because otherwise once you fill them up with water there's no way you can move them, this way they seriously come out so easy. So just an idea for anyone who wants to fill up barrels. Just don't make our same mistake and leave your barrels while filling it up. Long story short, here we just had the flood in our home, from the empty townhouse we share a wall with, back in June, then we were filling these barrels up inside the house, sometime in July, and not just once but twice it flooded. The first time, it was near the kitchen and living room on the tile, I got distracted, luckily Cara was at our house and she asked how the barrel was going. I panicked and ran in and started yelling "TURN OFF THE WATER!" While Cara went to turn off the water, Glen grabs the hose and kinks it and throws it in kitchen sink...while the water is still on...therefore, the hose unkinks and water starts spraying everywhere in the kitchen. I could not believe it. We all tried to hurry and soak up all the water and tried to save the new baseboards we have put in, and finally had that barrel done and pushed back in the closet. Then for the second barrel, we tucked it in the closet first and then started to fill it up. I didn't want the flood to happen again so I sat there for a minute or so and then decided it was going to take a little while and so I went to help my kids and Cara's kids get some food, and guess what happened? Yep, overflowing water all in our stairs closet. Again, we had to find more towels and clean up, take both barrels back out to put several fans to let it dry completely in there. Oh, Glen was sooo frustrated. We were exhausted after that and had a million towels to wash. It gives me a really good laugh now. I think for our emergency preparedness list we need to add "Build Noah's Ark!" Anyways, that wasn't a short story at all, but it was fun to write down that great moment!
After putting all the food storage away and other house stuff from moving, we had a ton of boxes. So last Friday when I had eight kids under 4 yrs. old, I thought I'd let the boxes keep them busy. I tried helping them make a house, which Caylin enjoyed and colored a box for a TV. But Dayson, Konnor, and Kade were more interested in stacking the boxes and knocking them down! Boys will be boys!
Here's just a few random pictures from last week. Glen was holding Bryson while getting in the freezer and Bryson reached in the door and pulled out a popsicle! The camera just happened to be right there, I had to take a picture! He's so stinkin' cute!

Glen was with the 12 yr. old scouts and they had to practice on a bar of soap for wood carving. This is what Glen created. We have no clue who it's supposed to be, but I thought it turned out really good.

1 comment:

Carol said...

You sound a little like me now. Flooding the house. I flood almost every home I've ever been in. :) You are so inspirational, Dayna! I just had to throw out a lot of year supply food that had gone bad. Now I'm trying to keep them in sight and on hand. And I love your craft ideas and projects! I still have a t-shirt quilt I need to finish. How do you ever find the time. :)