Storing large amounts of food can be challenging for those with small kitchens, no pantry space, barely any cabinet space or any number of other problems. Apartment dwellers often have the biggest problems and for many they are on a much tighter budget so purchasing in bulk is important for them. So finding storage is important for most people that purchase in bulk, and if you had to purchase everything you needed, you could spend a lot on storage.
A freezer:
While a normal sized freezer will work for many bulk food buyers, if you store other items in there like Popsicles, ice cream, frozen meals and frozen bags of fruit and vegetables, there might not be any room leftover. The best purchase I have ever made, was a freezer storage chest. They are expensive, I won’t lie. However, the money that our freezer chest has saved us, has been astronomical in comparison to having to purchase everything individually, and never being able to take part in great sales like 10lbs of ground turkey for $10.00. If you don’t think you will need a large one, many stores have small freezer chests for around $100 and if you plan and stack things, you can fit a lot into one of these smaller units. I recommend the purchase of an extra freezer. Shop around and find the best deal. It will save you loads in the future.
Shelves
A shelf unit, stored somewhere out of the way, like a laundry room or basement, is another terrific way to store bulk dry items. You can have shelves installed on the wall, however these don’t hold as much and the weight of items can be iffy. You can typically find good deals on shelving units around the end of the summer. The worst time to purchase is at the beginning of Spring throughout the summer because this is when people are “spring cleaning” their garages. These shelves can holds loads of stuff, and if you take into consideration some of the tips I gave in How to Frugally Store Large Purchases of Bulk Items, you can stretch these shelves far beyond your wildest imagination.
Reuse What You Have
As someone who is always finding new uses for old furniture and other items, you can use dressers, changing tables, and chests to store these items too. Place them in an easy to get to, yet out of the way place, and you can store dozens of items in these places. We use an old dresser in our basement to store extra paper bags, napkins, paper plates, plastic cutlery and other items that we use, but not frequently. You can store all sorts of things in a drawer.
Where do you store your bulk purchases or stockpiled items?
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