Food Storage: Repurposing Glass, Plastic, and Mylar to Package Dry Goods for Long-Term Storage

Does anyone else make purchasing decisions based on the jar the product comes in? I'm like oh that's a nice jar.

3 tips: •You won't lose the zipper on a zip-top mylar bag if you cut the bottom part off instead of the zip part. It'll keep getting smaller, but you'll keep the zipper this way. •We don't drink soda, either. We get the bottles from friends who do, or simply buy them and pour the soda out. They're often found for around $1, so it's worth it for us to buy them even though we're not drinking the contents! •The funnels you find at auto supply stores/auto supply section of Walmart are bigger and allow beans to pour through them. 😊

Single fella here, livin the travel trailer life, with 200# o beans & 200# o rice in 2 liter soda bottles. Plus canned goods. I blame you & Jonathan 😂🤣😂🤣🤔👍

On the peanut jars, I wrap cling wrap over the top before twisting on the lid, makes it's own safety seal.

God heard my prayers, I wanted to know how to store our food cheap, and your video popped up. Thank you so much!!

I lived in Utah back in 1994 after I was discharged from the Marines, just for a year. I was 19. My friend I was staying with, Marine buddy, was showing me all of her relatives and their food storage. I have never heard of that before. I'm from Ohio. I did learn that the people of Utah were excellent at prepping and it did change the way I do things all these years later. I also love how the LDS encourages their people to be prepared as well! I always said if things go bad, I'm heading for Utah! Which, I am prepared myself now as a grown woman, with the help of what I learned all those years ago.

To really protect your clear jars from light, wrap them in newspaper or brown paper and stick a label on them, so you won't have to take the paper off to find out what is inside. Even better would to make reusable cloth jar sacks out of tightly woven dark colored cloth, with a drawstring, and a clear vinyl pocket (cut from a clear table cloth) to hold a card with the contents written on it. Pop your bottle or jar inside, pull the drawstring shut, slip in the card, and stick it on your shelf.

I bought a cylinder shaped vacume sealer from a YouTube channel "Raincountry" here in WA state. Heidi's husband builds them. You can drop your jar in the cylinder and put the hose to a brake bleeder and pump the air out!! I LOVE IT! IT WORKS EVERY TIME! the reason for the brake bleeder is incase there's no electricity. They built a large version now too for quart sized jars. The brake bleeder can be used with seal a meal jar attachments too. I bet Jonathan could build them too.

We also use the top of a soda bottle as a funnel for wider mouthed jars. We just cut off the top 1/3 of the bottle and you have a funnel.

This was most informative and helpful ! Thank you ! Not having oxygen absorbers , the white rice was frozen for a couple of weeks , then poured into sanitized Boost bottles ! Each "single-serve" bottle holds two cups of rice... more manageable for a single -person household...and sharing . Be safe and well...

Kylene, For over 40 years I have used a double layer of plastic wrap under the large lids and brought it over the threads. After many years I have not had any failures. I have also used the wax and duct tape ideas with the plastic wrap.

I have been using my different containers for some time, I also put the tape on the lids for extra safety. You had a great video and full of information. With sugar, if it gets hard, get your grader out and scrape the sugar, you will get the fine sugar again. This was done during my Grandmother's time.

I store a lot of items in plastic bottles! Empty 2 liter soda bottles for rice, black beans, split peas, lentils, and small- shell pasta. Empty 3 quart apple juice bottles hold chlorinated tap water for drinking. Empty square ice cream pails hold mylar packages of muffin mixes. Empty plastic peanut butter pretzel jars with screw-on lids hold cardboard cylinders of instant coffee mix. Empty laundry detergent jugs with spouts, and liquid handsoap jugs, are refilled with water and labeled "soapy water- don't drink" for hand or dish washing. We tend to buy the same groceries repeatedly, so we get a lot of the same containers each week. I even reuse plastic steamer containers from frozen food for gardening!

I was born in Jamaica n my mom would store beans n corn under sea sand. She would put the beans in buckets n pour dry sea sand over it. Would last for years

I learned a way to store green beans from my garden from watching A couple of Homestead YT channels. The process is called Leather Britches & was a way of preserving them prior to canning jars & lids. You use string or thread & needle. Hang them to dry in warm area. I hung them at the back of my stove. They really shrink up. I have since put them in ziplockbag.

never forget how many places will give you used food safe buckets that you can use (with or without mylar bags) ! from bakeries that get their icing in multi gallon tubs, to sandwich shops who get pickles in 5 gallon buckets. ... i always save my salsa, jelly, or tomato sauce jars to use as "gift size" preps... carefully cleaned and filled with rice, beans, and maybe a jar of salsa or pasta sauce intact? its a combination meal kit/housewarming and safe to hand out gift. ... if people in need come to my door i can hand out small amounts (or if they are homeless or lacking cooking ability i give canned soups or etc) without revealing how much i have in storage

I put the pasta sauce lids out in the sun for a couple of days to bleach and remove the odor. Thanks for doing this video.

I am glad you are showing people a better alternative for storing their food instead of just stockpiling food from the supermarket that it still in its regular packaging. I have never found a better price on #10 cans of basic food storage than the prices at the LDS Home Storage Center online store. Too bad I have to shop elsewhere for #10 cans of dried "luxury" foods such as meat, poultry, cheese, broccoli, spinach, cornmeal, tomato powder, white grits and powdered eggs. I store granulated cane sugar in salvaged, rectangular, cranberry juice bottles. Sugar is so heavy, even in a two-gallon bucket, so those filled bottles are easier for me to move and their rectangular shape means they can be packed together tightly in the bottom of a closet with less wasted space or lay on their sides under a dresser or sofa. I use the somewhat smaller, cylindrical, plastic beverage bottles, such as Snapple tea bottles, for storing pink Himalayan salt from the dollar store. Those bottles can fit in the spaces between the five-gallon buckets of wheat grain, white rice and dried beans. I have used a Food Saver jar attachment to vacuum-seal the lids on canning jars filled with dry foods. I store those glass jars in shallow cardboard boxes, the boxes reinforced with mover's tape, so that the jars are less likely to fall and break if there is an earthquake. I do have to check those jars periodically to make sure a lid has not lost its seal. It is hard to beat using Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers at home to preserve an assortment of different styles of dry pasta, dried mushrooms, cocoa powder, masa, dehydrated hash brown potatoes, dry onion flakes, baking mixes, dry culinary herbs, Nesquik flavored drink mixes, tea bags, dry soup mixes and home dehydrated veggies and fruit.

I cannot get mylar anymore (Ireland) glad I bought when I did.... I save everything now

Sugar and salt never go bad. If they clump, break up the clumps and you have the same product as you did when you stored it. Commercial salt and sugar have expiration dates so the salt and sugar industries can sell you more products, as is true with virtually every commercially processed food (and some non-food products as well). And for anyone who doesn't already know, both honey and maple syrup are still good if they sugar over; simply put the whole container inside a pan with water and heat it gently until the sugars dissolve again (be sure to remove the lid before heating). This technique can be repeated indefinitely. Thank you for sharing these food storage techniques. I prefer to use glass and stainless steel for my food storage (both short and long-term) as plastics have been shown to affect hormones and can affect health. These negative effects include can cause a number of health issues, including cancer, diabetes, reproductive disorders, neurological impairments in developing fetuses and children, and even death. {Taken from the Endocrine Society's article "Plastics, EDCs & Health: Authoritative Guide."} If you have no alternative to using PETE / PET plastics to store food, then do so, but be on the lookout for glass jars when you're making purchase decisions in the grocery store. Starvation will kill you much faster than any potential disease from plastic, so plan accordingly.