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

it is possible to store long-term storage food storage like these dry goods for almost free if you know how to do it [Music] hey provident preppers i'm kyleen and today i'm going to teach you how to store long-term food storage really cheaply and with the price of food and everything that's going on having food storage just makes a whole lot of sense but a lot of us have a lot of buttered budget restraints which means that we need to look for ways to conserve if i can do it with cheaper packaging and still get the same results then i can actually store more food so let's talk about this really quick so the one of the least expensive places to get food storage that's already packaged in these fantastic number 10 cans and this is actually the best way you'll get the longest shelf life with it is from the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints they have what they call home storage centers all over the united states and you can drive to one of them you don't have to be a member and you can buy food storage already in the cans like this for really inexpensive now there's a few things that cost more in these cans but quite frankly if i buy black beans from there i can get them already in the cans cheaper than i can buy them at the store so you do have to do a little bit of price shopping but they also you can also order them online it does cost more because there's shipping involved but that is one inexpensive item you can totally go to like august and farms and a bunch of different places and get your food storage in cans like this but it really adds up and sometimes you just have to look for less expensive ways to do it so today we're going to talk about three of them and i'm just going to review it really quick and then i'll show you in detail how i do it so glass jars super fantastic there's a and like this one this is a repurposed pickle jar right you have to wash them really really well and you want to make sure that they don't have any odors in them that will like this is flour and this was originally a nallies pickled jar so if you didn't clean it really well my flour is going to smell and taste like pickles so you want to avoid that but we want to use an oxygen absorber in it but i'll tell you a little bit more about that in a minute this is a peat bottle it's so on the bottom it says number one with the recycling symbol and peat either p-e-t or p-e-t-e and there have been studies shown that this will maintain a low oxygen environment of less than one percent for at least one year now who knows how long it will really do it but the study only lasted for one year this is some wheat that i've had in my storage room since 2006 and actually this is really cool because i bring it up from the basement and i can just dump it right in the wheat grinder but this is still like super fantastic it's it's perfectly good we don't drink a lot of soda and so we don't get this option very often unless we can get get somebody else's recycled stuff now this one might surprise you this is actually a mylar bag this is a black mylar bag but you can reuse these mylar bags and a lot of times mylar is good because if you're doing a lot you might only have so many repurposed containers that you can use this currently was opened by one of the kids so it wasn't open very nicely has some linguine in it but what you do with this is you would just cut off the top and if it has a zip in it yes you're going to lose the zip but you're going to cut off the top you're going to clean it out really well and then you're going to repackage it and heat seal it again right and it's going to get smaller and smaller every time but that means that instead of one use out of this bag you might be able to get four or five uses so let's get busy and let's start talking about glass [Music] now first we need to stop for just a second and talk about good candidates for long-term food storage those are foods that are low in moisture less than 10 or less and low in fat fat goes rancid in storage so you wouldn't want to store brown rice for long-term storage it would be great for short-term storage but you're going to want to do white rice if you want it to last in storage there is a website and i will leave a link to it in the description of the video that will tell you how much moisture certain foods have in them it's a super great resource but look you know check it out and make sure i'm not going to want to store like dried apricots you know the nice wet moisture kind in this way at all so just make sure that we're using the right candidates now there are a couple things that affect the food and food storage one is oxidation and that will break down the food very quickly that is one of the reasons why we use oxygen absorbers and let me just show you really quickly i'll open these i really like wallaby um they're oxygen absorbers one of these bags is a 400 cc and one's a 500. now i just use those for anything one gallon or less really a stickly i only need a hundred cc's for a quart jar but it's a pain to have a whole bunch of them open at one time and this way what will happen is if i put a 400 cc oxygen absorber in here and i close it up tight it's only going to use about 100 cc of that oxygen absorber up and then the chemical reaction will stop when i open it up and take some out and then close it back up that reaction will start again and it will remove the oxygen so that's that's super cool um i one of the reasons why i like wallaby is because they come in packs of tin and that means that i don't have to have very many open at once and what i do is i always open that and then immediately put in a small mason jar so that they don't start working right they'll absorb the moisture or the oxygen in here but then they'll stop so for me that's that's really important that is what i do now with the glass jars they are subject to breakage and they're also subject to light so you need to store them in a dark place and protect them from getting broken but what you're looking at right here well except for this one is from john's sister she had texted on the family text and said hey i've got some extra canning judges does anybody want them and i'm all over that because now i have you know some fantastic containers to store more food in we talked about this as a pickle jar this one is actually a maraschino cherry jar but there are all kinds of jars that would be good candidates that normally you're going to throw away spaghetti sauce jars those kinds of things you need to wash them out really really well hot soapy water make sure there's nothing in it and then what i do is i'm in fact click the link um in the card in the corner and i'll take you and i'll leave it in the description of the video also but um we wrote a post and made a video about how to clean this because it's best if they're sanitized right you want to make sure that you're putting it in a completely clean dry container so all of these like i said are free there is rust around these rings i really don't care it's still going to keep it on tight and i will reuse these lids because now i'm going to look at them and make sure that they're clean right if they've got any mold or if they've got a little chip out of them or something doesn't look quite right i'm not going to use it but for dry goods i'd never do it with wet pack but for dry goods i'm completely fine with that the other thing when you're using canning jars is you could vacuum seal them and that would be totally acceptable and then it's not quite completely free but pretty darn close so we talked about there's two reasons why you need to use an oxygen absorber one is to prevent oxidation in storage the second one is insects because in this bag of beans it is very possible that some little critter is in there and would like to multiply in this and by putting an oxygen absorber in we take the oxygen level almost non-existent in there and life cannot survive so if there's insects or eggs they're not going to be able to multiply right there for all intensive purposes just dead so that's why we want to do it now some people ask well do you need to freeze it first the only reason why you would want to use the freeze thaw freeze method is if you are not using oxygen absorbers and that only takes care of the insects so don't put this in the freezer unless you're not using oxygen absorbers and if you are going to do that make sure you go to that link about glass canning jars and then there will tell you exactly the appropriate way to do it so now what i like to do with these is to put the oxygen absorber and that's kind of the nice thing too see it's good for that two quart jar it's good for the quartz and it's good for the pint i'm going to put an oxygen absorber in the bottom of each one of these and stick this back in this right away and now i'm just going to fill these up and i like to put in the bottom instead of the top because okay i'm kind of greedy and i want to get as much in there as i can and i don't want to have to leave room for the oxygen absorber at the top so as soon as i do that and i'm shaking it down that's all it takes this is on nice and snug right and now you should notice or you should find that within a few hours at least 12 hours you're gonna see that this lid pops down sometimes for some reason the wide mouth will seal but they won't actually pop down i'm not at all worried about that so let me fill these and i'll be right back okay it's that fast like put the oxygen absorber in the bottom fill them up put the lid on that's it that's all that it takes to do it in these glass jars which is super super fantastic now if you are going to use sugar or salt do not use an oxygen absorber because it will turn them hard right but with things like rice and beans and wheat and flour you would want to use an oxygen absorber now that these are done this right now if you store it in a cool dark dry place you can have a 25 to 30 year shelf life that's crazy if you're still storing it in the bags like what's behind me then your shelf life is going to be really short those beans are going to turn really hard very quickly you're going to have problems with insects but just by taking a few steps suddenly you've extended that shelf life for a really long time and the quality will stay good for a long time and these jars were free i only had to pay a few pennies for the oxygen absorbers now let's move on to the peat plastic bottles that's really cool this has to be i think one of the best ways to use something that is a free resource that is just being thrown away and repurposing it for something better so same rules apply to this with the oxygen absorber um like this green one wouldn't be as subject to light but these definitely would be would be pretty subject to light now um you can make a paper funnel one of the challenges with this is filling it now this one doesn't have a challenge filling it and think how often you throw these containers away right um sometimes if you feel like you don't get a good airtight seal because these had originally like a cardboard thing in there and i pulled it out because i don't want those i don't want any chance for contaminants and that had some of the other food and they're a little bit i don't know i'm not real comfortable with them but you can just take a piece of duct tape or electrical tape or any kind of tape like that let me tell you masking tape and painters tape don't work because they'll they'll come off but the the painters tape or not the painters tape the duct tape or the electrical tape works really really well you just put it on the seal i've also heard of people one of our viewers said that what they do is they just get some hot wax and they just take the end and they dip it in the hot wax and then let it cool i personally haven't tried that but i totally think it would work so with this um it's just so it's so similar it takes a little bit more work actually especially these because it's harder to get the product inside of it but again oxygen absorber i always put it in first and then i should put this in here first um because the bag sometimes it's hard to dump from oh i guess i should open it [Music] and remember we're always starting with quality products we don't ever want to put junk in here it doesn't get any better with storage so make sure that it's high quality and then see you have to play with it just a little bit to get it to work and a paper funnel totally might be helpful go to the video that we did on food storage in peak plastic bottles because we've got some really good demo there but what i'm going to do is i'm going to repeat this process for all of these and put the lid on and label them and it'll be amazing and i will be right back okay so these were a little bit harder to fill because of the the little narrow neck but check this out this is a free resource i mean and this one's got its little handle um height and then with the refillable so you use it up and then you could just do the same process over and over again and now of course someday they're going to kind of wear out and they won't be good anymore but what a great way to repurpose something and have a nice long shelf life now this is not going to have as long as shelf life as glass or as the number 10 cans but like this is 2006 and it's still okay so this one is almost 20 years i mean it's just fine i would target this for more like 10 or maybe 15 but so far i've had super fantastic success make sure you use an oxygen absorber but if it's sugar or salt don't use an oxygen absorber there's one more thing that i wanted to mention about this so these containers i do not have a high level of confidence because they didn't hold liquid before right i think this was peanuts and one was himalayan salt um and so i'm not positive that my seal is going to be airtight and that's why this has been sealed with some cute little duct tape to make sure that i have an airtight seal but these i have a high level of confidence that this seal is just fine absolutely if you want to you could put that duct tape around here you could dip it in the wax anything you want to do to to improve this seal but like this one yeah it's been in here a really long time and the steel is perfectly fine so pretty much if it's held liquid i'm fairly confident that it will have an airtight seal but like these i don't i don't know for sure so that's why they have the the duct tape around them the next thing i want to talk about is mylar now mylar is more expensive but like we talked about you can repurpose them right so this has a zip seal on it now you can't just zip seal you have to heat seal it with an impulse sealer or this is my hair straightener that still has hair on it and you're going to heat seal that top or you won't get the airtight steel that you need the zip won't provide that but um you can cut it off the next time you won't have the zip but you can reuse it and it gets smaller and smaller and smaller but you can repurpose it to get more than just one use out of it so there you go with that now this is wallaby wallaby is my favorite as you probably know these are gusseted and the bottom opens up so that they can stand which i really like but in this one that they have this is a new kit that they have it has three different sizes and the reason why i think that is really cool is because sometimes you don't want an entire gallon of food storage maybe there's only one person right or maybe two people or maybe you're doing a spice or salt which you might not want a gallon of it but it sure would be nice in these smaller bags so it just kind of gives you a little bit more flexibility and that's the other thing you know quite frankly my favorite peat bottle to use are powerade or gatorade bottles because they're just that smaller size and i'm thinking you know if something happens and i need to share with somebody i'm not going to have any problem sharing a recycled um gatorade bottle especially because it's smaller right it the container was free there's probably a dollars worth of rice in there or beans or something but it could make a difference for somebody else so i really like that now i'm going to show you a quick little trick ah i don't have any open oxygen absorbers okay and seriously with these now this is a kit so it came with the oxygen absorbers just like this and i'm just going to cut off the top put them right into my jar we you just don't want these out longer than 30 minutes because they're going to start working and let me take one out they're going to start working and that's a chemical reaction once that chemical reaction is gone it's spent now this is cornmeal and um i'm going to store it if you remember if you ever want to check the moisture level of what you're doing go to the site that i put in the description and you should be able to get a pretty close idea but i actually want to store this in its original container and so if i were to just stick the oxygen absorber in here and put the bag in here it's not going to be able to suck out the oxygen appropriately so i'm going to tuck it directly in there but then i don't want this to spill out all over wallaby has these super cool labels that come with it and they are just perfect for closing this with the oxygen absorber inside now the reason why i want to do that is because i don't want cornmeal leaking all over the bag do you have to do it absolutely not i just think it's it's kind of helpful but because the oxygen absorber is in he inside here it's going to effectively remove all of the oxygen from the cornmeal which is where we want to remove from yet i still have the original container i like to do this with sugar too only have to buy the either put it in the five gallon containers of sugar or the five gallon mylar bags or buy smaller containers because like the ones i have right there we're gonna have to repackage those differently because they're too big for a one gallon okay see how i'm kind of squeezing out the air that i can and then i'm going to zip this closed perfect and before i seal it because this is warming up i'm going to write on here what's in here cornmeal 2022. you can totally put the month on it if you want most of the time i don't get that specific because i'm storing these for years not for for months well depends rotation i think is super important that you rotate everything regularly and have the highest quality but sometimes our life is a little bit different and we don't eat as many um basics but we sure like to have them in storage because who knows what's going to happen right but ideally you would want to rotate through all of this do you see how i've got that really good seal on there this is packaged and ready to go now this bag needs to be protected from rodents because mice can chew through it very quickly um but this is now got a 25 year shelf life right well with cornmeal i'd probably shoot more for 15 because it's already milled any whole products like wheat berries have a longer shelf life than say white flour because my flour has been milled so because this is milled probably more like 15. now let's try some sugar now remember with sugar we do not want an oxygen absorber because it will turn it hard we're just going to put it right in here tap it down just a little bit that's something that's so nice about these gusseted bags is they'll stand up straight and i want to fill it almost all the way but not quite because i need to be able to seal this right so i'm going to do the same thing where i'm going to squeeze out the air the best that i can and i'm going to seal that this is white sugar 20 22 heat seal sometimes i like to just tap it first because we don't want to have any little wrinkles in here right just want a good seal inspect that seal then what i like to do is just distribute it through here so that there we go so it's going to lay a little bit more flat and now this actually has a forever shelf life white sugar is never going to go bad unless it's contaminated and so this is has a true oxygen and a true moisture barrier so the white sugar in here should be good i have noticed with some of mine that when it gets about 20 years old it does get a little bit clumpy but we still use it and the clumps come out when we cook it so all right so now i'm going to work on packaging some of the rest of these but so the difference in size was really important but the other thing is i can only have so many repurposed containers so if i just keep collecting them and i'm gradually building my storage that's fine but if something's happening and there's a crisis and i want to store more because i don't know how much food there's going to be on the horizon getting something like mylar bags so you've got more containers would be a great option so and if you wallaby is our favorite we have a promo code that'll save you five dollars off i think 75 dollars we'll put that in the description if this is something that's interesting to you so let me package this up and i'll be right back all of these mylar bags are filled they have oxygen absorbers in them except the sugar which does not have an oxygen absorber in them we should notice over the next 24 hours that they're gonna shrink up just a little bit um sometimes they'll shrink up a lot and it'll be vacuum like really vacuum sucked but for the most part um they're still going to be just a little bit puffy because air is like 79 nitrogen and 21 oxygen and so it's only the oxygen that is being removed from the bag and that's all that hurts the food so what we've done here is we've created the perfect environment to make these shelf stable for a very long time both of these you're looking at maybe 25 years this one maybe 20. so a super great way to use products like this that you would have just thrown away and to store your food so it'll last longer now i highly encourage you never to leave these on your shelf that long rotate through them right so that you've always got fresh food because it's going to be higher in nutrients it's going to taste better the quality is going to be better it's just a better choice all around but this is a really great thing make sure that you go back and look at the posts that we've written there's one on storing food in plastic peat bottles there's one on glass jars and there's one on mylar and it goes into much greater detail there's also a video on each one of these and i will leave links to those so that you can see them so get busy storing food right now while it's still relatively cheap just so that you have something to eat even if it's not what you'd really love to eat just so you have something to keep you alive when things get really tough until they get better again so for the question of the day what are some inexpensive ways that you've found to store your food that are safe it's got to be safe and effective comment below and thanks for being part of the solution

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 369,281

Keywords: Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, food storage, SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Food Shortage, cheap food storage, repurposed packaging for food storage

Id: 5awHTLi6wF4

Length: 26min 37sec (1597 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 26 2022