WF and I did a SAM’s run this weekend and walked out $400 lighter. We don’t feel we bought anything frivolous and did buy a ton of preps. Batteries, paper products, etc.
A few of the items we bought were 25 lbs. bags of rice, sugar and flour. This is our first adventure in attempting to do semi long term storage. We already purchased a vacuum sealer last year and this was the weekend for the sealer to earn its keep.
The dry goods was our biggest project. After doing a bit of reading we bypassed the food grade buckets in loo of vacuum sealing and putting the food packages (rice, flour, sugar) into Homer buckets.
These are new buckets and each of the lids each have a rubber seal.
We split the 25 lbs. bags into 5-7 lbs. vacuum sealed bags and placed into their own bucket.
Each bucket held 25 lbs. and we were able to use just one bucket for each product.
I was disappointed in the vacuum sealer. After a few bags the sealer would stop “sucking” and I had to let the unit sit and cool before attempting another. It added a considerable amount of time to our process. So I think we will be looking for another unit.
We are not sure how long the food will store, and we also didn’t add any oxygen absorbers in the bucket themselves. So we will see what the end result will be. As we progress in our storage we will learn what to do and what not to do. Overall we will be using the dry goods as needed and replacing as necessary. Overall we are not starting off looking for 10 year storage of the products.
Will keep you posted.
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