Over the weekend we went thru fifteen 6 gallon buckets that were given to us that had food storage in them. Come to find out they were from 1980. Now that is a long time to have something and never even look in it. The writing on the buckets was not even legible anymore, so we had to open them up to see what was in there and if it was any good still.  Boy oh boy did we have a few surprises.

The various food buckets (Survival Food Buckets) are an excellent way to store your food storage, as they are easy to carry, easy to stack to save space, and can be opened and resealed to remove what you need at the time, which is why we use them along with the #10 cans we get.

To start with they were 6 Gallon Bucket with Lid that had the plastic lids that had to be pried off. Good thing were have the tool as those buckets were hard to open even with the tool (Bucket Lid Wrench – Open / Lift Lids on 5 Gallon Plastic Buckets & Small Pails – Yellow – Durable Plastic Opener Tool). I suggest that if you do not already have this little tool to go ahead and get one as it will come in handy. Most of the lids ended up cracking and breaking when we finally got them opened. What we learned from that alone is we are switching all of our covers to the Gamma Seal Lid – ASSORTED COLORS. Which we were already about 50/50 with, the new buckets we purchase will have the gamma lids, and we are going to replace the regular lids with the gamma lids.

The second thing we learned is that after so many years things must not have been stored properly and certainly not rotated into daily use as we can not stress enough. After all the money that went into these buckets, the contents of only about 3 were salvageable out of 15 or so.

So now we ended up with having to get rid of a lot of millet, beans, and wheat. By not rotating and properly storing these buckets into her daily food use as we can not stress enough, if she had to use her food storage most of it would be no good. Having to get rid of 20 pounds of various grains can be an experience I would wish on no one. It became a daunting process of airing out the house from the smell and what to do with it. We ended up dumping some into the trash can for collection and deciding to dump a few more every week until it is gone. So now we have broken buckets with rancid grains, which let me tell you does not smell pleasant at all, outside waiting to go into the trash can.

Out of the buckets we could reuse 4. Now that is not too bad after having these buckets filled and stored for 32 years. The only negative I have to say is that trying to open them was a chore and resulted in many broken lids and a few comical moments of fighting with a cover to open and landing on my butt.

So please learn from what we went thru and remember ROTATION, ROTATION, ROTATION and use your food storage and not keep it for a rainy day. When it comes to food storage many are in the mind set of gathering and storing We need to change your thinking from that into using and rotating food storage so it does not become a waste of money. With the cost of food rising who want to spend all that money just to throw it away?

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