Shelves to help maximize your food storage capacity

[Nickelless]

I'd been looking for several months for metal storage shelves similar to the one pictured below that came with my house. I struck pay dirt a couple weeks ago on steel shelving at Menards that is MUCH sturdier and offers a lot more shelf space for the money than I'd expected. I'll post a photo of the configuration soon, but I'm arranging the shelves at right angles to each other (bolting the posts of adjacent units to each other for added sturdiness) and am managing to fit eight 5-by-1.5-foot shelves 6 feet high in an area 6.5 feet wide and 26 feet long. (The shelves pictured below are only 5 feet tall, 2.5 feet wide and 1 foot deep.) Do the math in your own head and imagine the storage potential for food and other preps. I can fit 108 14.5-ounce cans of vegetables in a 2.5-by-1-by-1.5-foot area on one of my old shelves (below), and now so much more on the new larger shelves.

Now think about your own potential space for food storage. Figure out how much stuff you have cluttering your own closet space and figure out where you could install your own shelves for food storage. (I wouldn't recommend storing food items in the garage because of extreme temperatures.) Consolidate all of the clutter you never bother with anyway (or sell it or throw it away) in a remote area of the garage and free up closets and/or empty wall space for food storage. You may think it looks unsightly to have row after row of canned goods on your office shelves (try storing the cans in boxes and rotate your inventory regularly), but why should you care what other people think about where and what you're storing in your own house? You could always bolt storage shelves to a wall and then build what resembles a closet around those shelves so that people will think it's, well, just a closet.

Have any of you guys done anything like this yet, or are you planning to?

[68Camaro]

Been using big shelves for years, though major stocking up with them only the past couple. The better ones IMHO, if you can afford them, are the heavier duty ones that assemble and dissassemble with a rubber mallet using studs and slotted holes. The come in various sizes, widths, depths, and capacaties, but as one that has moved my hoard several times over a number of years, and reconfigured shelves several times, they have been priceless versus the bolt-together kind (which I used to have). Any shelf is good, but I would move toward the knock-down type. That's all I have, and I have 10 of them.

[Nickelless]

Been using big shelves for years, though major stocking up with them only the past couple. The better ones IMHO, if you can afford them, are the heavier duty ones that assemble and dissassemble with a rubber mallet using studs and slotted holes. The come in various sizes, widths, depths, and capacaties, but as one that has moved my hoard several times over a number of years, and reconfigured shelves several times, they have been priceless versus the bolt-together kind (which I used to have). Any shelf is good, but I would move toward the knock-down type. That's all I have, and I have 10 of them.

Sounds like you got exactly the same kind of shelves that I bought:

http://www.menards.com/main/tools-hardw ... c-9752.htm

And if you need an extra shelf set, I bought 11 of 'em for 30 percent off!

[68Camaro]

Yep - that's the most recent type I've bought. There must be a couple of makers of similar ones. Each type has small differences, but all basically work the same way. Good choice!

[Mossy]

Those holes are great for bolting sheets of plywood to. Stiffens them nicely and keeps stuff from falling out the sides and back. You can also fasten board across the front of the shelves to help keep things in during earthquakes. If you live near, or go by, a fishing port, you can sometimes scrounge some seine web (netting). That also can be used to hold stuff on a shelf (or hold down loads in a pickup bed or on a trailer).