Monday, November 24, 2008

Lesson Learned

You know when they say to buy things for your food storage that you USE? Well, you should listen. I wish I had. I don't know if I can even tell you how many jars I had to throw away this past weekend because they had expired. It is so humiliating and depressing I don't even want to think about it. Maybe I will let you all guess how many jars/cans you think I had to throw away.

Why am I telling you all this? No, not so you can all gasp and think I am a total idiot (although I sure feel like one) but so that you don't make the same mistake I did. Granted, my intentions were good. Really good. Before we moved here I wanted a substantial food storage. I got things on case lot sales and even canned a ton at the cannery. The only thing I did wrong was think, "Oh, we'll eat that if we have it." Well, dozens of expired jars of applesauce, not so tasty salsa, soup, and other canned vegetables later we still haven't eaten them and they have to be thrown out.

I am sick about it. I can't believe I had all that food in my pantry and never used it. The other thing we did wrong was that we didn't unwrap the cases after we moved. We had done cellophane wrap all over them in order to get them safely here and then never unwrapped them. Somewhere in my mind I left the hall closet untouched because it was our food storage.It was stored away in my mind for a disaster.  Hello! You are supposed to rotate your food storage so this doesn't happen! Well, now I know you buy what you eat and you get a system that works to rotate the food.

Lesson learned...the hard way.

8 comments:

karin said...

I have a great system NOW but it has taken living at several different places to really get this system done great. But having kids has not helped, when I am not the one in charge of the system, it gets a little relaxed and it takes a little while to get it back on the system. Good luck, it does take a little bit of OCD though.

JanelWarner said...

I remember you talking about the chicken you canned.

Angie said...

I remeber that canned chicken kick... Don't beat yourfelf up. Lesson learned right? Now just get going on stuff you'll actually use.
P.S. Does it make you feel any better to know Mom and Dad have all their wheat in their food storage and now they don't eat wheat?
Love you.

Shay said...

It is so hard to throw food away. I have some food in my food storage that probably has to get thrown out. I have been doing good buying what we eat, it's just the stuff that my grandma gave me a few years ago for Christmas that I have never used. Sometimes it's just hard to remember to use it!

Kirst said...

I guess that's a plus for us moving every year. As I unpack our cans I get to look at what is expired in our food storage. Our lesson learned this time around. We don't eat pork and beans nearly enough to have it in our food storage, it's ALL expired.

mistyp said...

Great advice. I totally agree with buying stuff you'll really eat! The little bit of stuff we do have stored up, my kids seem to find and get into it before it can exprire anyway. :)

Shawn and Steph said...

Thanks for the reminder...we need to start eating ours!

Anonymous said...

Oh Leah...You are not the only person that finds themselves with this problem. I would be perfectly happy to buy my food storage and not look at it again until I really was starving...however like you said that is not how it works. We are in the process right now of builiding shelves in our cold storage so we can start "our store". which is basically what it needs to be to do it correctly. I am scared because I know it is going to require a lot of attention...and right now I have not one more ounce of attention to give...you know what I mean....what do you do?