We are looking at moving to the homestead this upcoming spring, however, preparations for that move are starting now. This will be a big change for our family of seven, and we want to make it as smooth as possible. To that end, we are working on storing quantities of dried and canned goods.

We started canning this past spring, but really needed a solution for dried goods in large quantities With five hungry kiddos in the house we go through approximately 50 lbs of rice, and 25 lbs of steel cut oats, each month. That is a lot to keep on hand, especially if you are wanting to have a few months worth of food stores.

We go through such quantities of these items due to a variety of food intolerances within the household. In explanation I will give a quick rundown of our food “naughty list.”

That ought to help explain some of this craziness.

So, in order to solve our storage issue, we decided to use food grade buckets. Now, if you have ever purchased food grade buckets, you will understand that they are rather pricey. That doesn’t work for us. But, local bakeries use an abundance of food grade buckets that they throw away each week, and usually are willing to allow people to take them home for free. We contacted our local doughnut and pastry shop and asked if we could have their discarded buckets.  They were happy to give them to us. Every week or so, we stop by and pick up the buckets, take them home, scrub them and fill them or store them.

This picture was taken after a bucket washing day. Let me tell you, if you have a frosting fetish, washing a couple dozen frosting crusted buckets will cure you for good.

Once they are clean and dried we fill and label them for storage, always putting the month and year they were filled on the bucket,  so that we can rotate our supply.

This comes in really handy for the lesser used items, like glutenized flours or processed sugars. Only a few people in the house can eat these things, and so unless I am making two batches of the goody, these don’t get used much.

It also comes in handy for times when there is a good sale or clearance of dried goods.

We shop at a local discount grocery store, where we frequently find amazing deals on bulk gluten free flours, or noodles, beans, and even chips or cereals that the intolerant ones can eat. When we find these deals, we often stock up, or even buy them out, then bucket the items when we get home for safe storage away from any nibbling marauders.

So this is one way that we are preparing for our move to the homestead this spring. Hoping to have, at the very least, a few months worth of stored foods, perhaps even so much as a years worth, in order to make this transition less hectic.

Keep checking back for more Homestead Prep, and Healthy Life Hacks.

One little extra tip: Putting a paper towel in the bucket with your dried goods, is a good way to keep any extra sneaky moisture from invading your stores.