Storage: Hiding in plain sight

      Prepping is a space invasive undertaking, but I also like my place to look decent. Notice how I didn't say tidy.... Absolutely anything can become a place to store your preps. I began by taking over my son's closet, he's 8 and a boy, so all of his stuff is in the dresser or all over the floor. One of the 4-shelf wire rack style shelving units from the local big box store fits into the closet perfectly. Currently residing there is all the food I canned myself. Light can affect the quality and storage time of canned goods in clear jars, so the dark closet is a blessing. Everything is labeled individually listing contents and canning date. I'll go into canning at a later time, but it is definitely worth learning! The boxes that the jars come in make organizing the closet much easier. I have a simple label maker, so when I'm making the jar labels, I make an extra for the end of the box so I know what is inside each flat of jars. Don't skip this step! Once you start stacking the flats of full jars, this step will save you time hunting down chili instead of pasta sauce (just as an example).
     Under my bed is another favorite place. This is currently being used to house canned food bought from a store. Should my condo flood, since I am on the first floor, these cans will be fine. To make access easier, I placed the cans in rows on top of managable-sized pieces of board - heavy cardboard or plywood work, and I slide the boards out from under the bed and back on the carpet as needed. This works well now, but add a small handle to the board if it will make it easier for you. Bed raisers are a great idea if your bed is too low, but I'm not wild on the idea of actually having to jump into bed!
      These places were great for the first year or so, but now I have outgrown my pantry. Never one to be daunted by lack of space for my chosen form of investment, I decided to utilize the high ceilings in my place with, you guessed it, more shelves! My color scheme in the condo is black, white and green aside from the walls which were painted by my landlord, meaning that I had no input. So for me to be ascetically pleased while satisfying my need for space, I knew I had to cover these shelves. (The pic is grainy, and I'll work on that for next time, sorry.)

Again, these are the 5 shelf, wire variety from the box store. I bought black to fit my decor, and these are extremely easy to assemble even without help. You can see the 5 gallon buckets under the bottom shelf on the left in the picture, the 6 buckets in the center will have a board 'shelf' put on top soon, but this is still a work in progress for me. Since this picture was taken, I have covered most of the shelves with a fabric curtain thereby hiding the prep stuff on the shelves. Now I have much more room to hold whatever I need, in plain sight. Thankfully I did this now since I am buying up jars before retailers put them away for the season.

So, for homework, look around your place and see what areas you could use for storage. Have any room for shelves? Have a herd of rabid dust bunnies under your bed that you could evict? Or a poorly organized closet you could stash some buckets into? Everyone has space somewhere! Also, if you find yourself at a box store and they have jars in usable sizes (no less than half pint), go ahead and buy some. I have cranberries in the fridge I need to use up, so canning is on my list within the next week, as well as finishing off the organization of the new shelves and posting pictures of that.

Thanks, for reading; now Go Prep Something!