organization (part 1)
Organizing the kitchen.
It’s a big deal.
I’m that person who sits at work and just daydreams about organizing the kitchen.
These are Ball canning jars, which means super cheap (about 1$ apiece) and hey! if I come across a surplus of whole fruit that needs to be canned, I am SO THERE.
Also: they’re attractive, they don’t leak evil into my food, they stack, and they fit into my tiny cabinets.
Quart jars aren’t big enough to hold five pounds of rice (or beans or flour or sugar), but they’re big enough to hold a lot. Like … vital wheat gluten! sliced almonds! flax seeds! brown sugar! steelcut oatmeal! popcorn!
That’s it for now. I only washed six jars …
(okay: I gave in and finished … Rolled oats, pastry flour, mung beans from (gulp) 2003, brown rice. and chocolate. all now safely held in jars.)
an open eye 
haha. that’s exactly what we’ve got. we’ve got about 20 canning jars full of different food stuff. Then we got 3 6 gallon buckets and some screw on lids for our white rice, brown rice, and beans. We used to use yogurt containers, but they just weren’t as pretty. Plus plastic and food = icky!
Jenny
February 6, 2012 at 7:40 am
What are your buckets made of — galvanized steel? We bought feed buckets for the cats’ food & litter — I’m not thrilled with the plastic + food thing, but don’t know of a better way to keep it fresh. And they don’t like the stale food (who would?)
I’ve been looking for the PINT canning jars but can’t find them … daydreams!! Quart jars are nice, but … but they fit in my cabinets HOW EXCITING IS THAT?! I was storing food in the basement …
jane
February 7, 2012 at 9:39 am
Yeah. They’re plastic but food grade plastic. Oh. I think Lehmans has steel buckets… Lehmans.com –great website where its easy to spend waaaay too much money. And, weird, but hobby lobby has pretty cheap canning jars if you can get them on sale. All sizes. Even the blue ones (though they’re never cheap…)
Jenny
February 10, 2012 at 11:14 pm
(why can’t I reply to your comment?)
I luuurve Lehmans! but I’m not going to worry about the plastic in this case; I’ll store the food in its bag and THEN in the plastic, so there’s no contact.
There’s no Hobby Lobby around here, too bad … I know I’ve seen them at some of the other craft stores but didn’t price them, assuming they were super expensive. Huh!
jane
February 11, 2012 at 8:03 am
Huh… Now I can’t reply to your comment… Very strange…
I was getting the ones from Hobby Lobby for cheaper than at home type stores. A buck a piece. I think they’re normally $2. We used them to put flowers in for the wedding so I needed a whole bunch and since they were on sale. Otherwise, do you have a Kmart? They’re like the only store that I could find canning supplies at when I was up in Albuquerque… We found one website that was almost as cheap as the ones at Hobby Lobby like 1.25 for a dozen including the tax, but… ummm… I don’t know what the website was… :oP
Jenny
February 12, 2012 at 12:23 am
HUH! These quart ones were like a dollar apiece (from awful Wal-Mart, but the big food store had them for about the same) … I think we have a KMart somewhere? Maybe? I’m trying not to go crazy and put everything into canning jars but it’s HARD.
jane
February 12, 2012 at 4:55 am
We need to get better at organizing the kitchen. Ian buys all sorts of crazy stuff in bags and they fall out of the cupboards or get stuffed behind other things so we don’t even know they’re there. And then we’re all “what do you want to eat?” “I don’t know…there’s not really anything to eat.” Annoying!
Crystal
February 7, 2012 at 3:51 am
Bags are hard to store! And sometimes they break. Glass can break too, but it’s pretty beforehand …
Apparently we have seven different sorts of rice; I didn’t realize. How embarrassing is that? I’m trying to be more aware, rotate, make bigger batches, reuse. That sort of thing.
I’ll let you know if it works, lol.
jane
February 7, 2012 at 9:58 am