A Pantry Paragon; or, How to make your own can storage bins

We visited my husband's grandparents for the weekend. I've mentioned them in the blog before. Grandpa is an engineer, and this is evident by the way their house is planned and organized. Visitors love to look through their house at all of the good ideas in each room. The pantry is no exception.

Here is a picture of their pantry. As you can see, Grandpa has made his own can rotating storage bins out of painted cardboard. He likes this version because they are small and versatile, and can fit into a variety of pantry situations. Of course his version is also much cheaper than the commercial systems.

I asked if he could explain how these are made. To my surprise, he pulled out an engineering drawing with exact instructions. He gave permission for me to share the plans with the readers of this blog. These plans are for non-commercial home use only.

Added 1/6/09: Because I couldn't put a pdf file on Blogger, and because I got sick of emailing these out, the nice gals at Food Storage Made Easy have posted the plans on their site here.

Added 2/16/09: Jodi at Food Storage Made Easy made a cardboard can storage bin from Grandpa's instructions. They took pictures of how they did it! Check out their advice here.

He saved good quality cardboard and cut it to the dimensions indicated on the paper. It's important to cut the cardboard with a razor blade, he says, so the edge of the cardboard is square, so it will glue together correctly. He says that you need to stick close to those measurements in order for it to work. He glued it together with white glue. After it was assembled, he painted it. Any paint will do, he says. The paint significantly increases the strength of the cardboard. He has been using the bins pictured here for about 13 years, and they are still in good condition. Each bin is labeled, which makes it easy to find exactly what they want when they need it.

I also took a picture of his containers of staples. He got these jars from a manager of Chuck-a-rama. They use the bungee cords to keep the jars on the shelf in case of an earthquake.

All of the food stored in their pantry is what they use routinely. There are four cans of things like powdered eggs that they have had for years and have not used, but otherwise they store what they eat and eat what they store.