Is anyone using two liter soda bottles for storing dry goods such as rice, beans, wheat etc? They must be food grade and the plastic seems quite sturdy. How would you clean them and seal them after filling?
Seems like a good use for empty bottles.
KarMikDie01 is not using o2 absorbers with the bottles he is using a desiccant. O2 absorbers take out the oxygen and work with a sealed container. A desiccant only only used as a moisture control. It would be a waste to use an O2 absorber with these bottles since you can not seal them.
After the Doc took me off caffeine I started drinking Ocean Spray juice instead of tea. Amazing how fast those bottles pile up. I wash them out and store out in the shop in large trash bags.
I have to laugh at the 1 year storage comment. You can buy rice or pasta at the store in cardboard boxes or light plastic bags with 2-3 years on the mfr shelf life, are you telling me the shelf life would go down putting it in a plastic soda bottle or juice bottle?
After 8 months the oxygen level starts to rise. After that you might as well be storing it original packaging.
White rice and white pasta are junk. They take longer to spoil because they have already lost their nutritional value and are hardly an indication of how long actual food will last.
do you think you will be safe to sit tight if the shtf .,I think in most cases we will all be under threat from our fellow man who has not prepped for such posibilities as emp,s or superstorms that make katrina look small.
I think weight is a huge factor when looking at glass also the breakability issue.the 1 gallon water bottles with built in handles are perfect and a fraction of the price .And i agree that rice should be good for 3 years in them without using anything .and as for sealing them air tight ,a ring of silicone sealant two or three threads down should do a grand job .Again as you use up your rice you gain a extra gallon canister to carry and store water with,i would not trek any distance to get water in glass bottles ,just plain too heavy and fragile.
Why would most people be mobile? My plans don't involve any long term mobility. I really doubt that being mobile out in the open is safer, especially for people with families.
No real point in doing that. Oxygen will get in over time. Only Mylar or a metal can will stop it. This is ONLY a short/medium term storage system. Don't plan on anything lasting more that about 5 years. I use this for up to a four year supply. After that I think you best follow MikeK's advice and use the bucket/mylar/O2 absorber method. That is long term. Food degrades in oxygen over time. The food might be eatable after 10 years but it won't do what food is supposed to do. Nourishment. The things that your body requires is gone. You might as well eat leaves and sawdust. Personally I don't think I will last that long if it really hit the fan. Besides, if things get that bad I plan to get shot out of a irate husbands bedroom window, trousers in hand. Might as well go out with a bang and a reputation!
Good way to store your dried, ie. beans, rice, oats, etc., is to place two bay leaves at the bottom of 2 liter bottles which will kill any existing larvae eggs as well as keep insects away. So basically, using the hottest water you can, soak the bottles for roughly thirty minutes to an hour then allow the bottles to completely air dry before adding your stored goods. Once you tighten the cap it's best if you can seal them using wax. Will keep your dry foods fresh for decades and the two liter bottles are easy to store.
Bay leaves do not kill larva. There are lab tests that prove it. I wish this old wives tale would die off.
What they do help with is to cover the smell of the grains so that the moths have a harder time finding them to lay eggs in to start with. But they have no effect on the eggs that are already there. Same goes for Wrigley's spearmint gum. The other old wives tale.
And the only way it's going to stay fresh for decades is if you remove the O2. Which you didn't mention. Hence we all the talk of O2 absorbers.
Ever seen a 2ltr soda bottle if you forget it for a year or so without using the product? All sucked in and scrunched up.
Plastic soda bottles are not a perfect barrier. They are permeable even if you never opened the factory seal.
Do not treat these is serious long term storage. For several years holding dry goods they will work perfectly fine. Maybe a bit longer depending on your climate. But once you've seen a 2ltr soda you forgot about in the garage after about 8 months here in Texas and you will know these things are not serious storage containers.
Though you get a bit more time if you went with the 3ltr type used for generic sodas because they require more thickness simply to support their fluid mass.
Even then though they don't hold a candle to food grade pickle barrels either nitrogen flushed or pumped with a vacuum. Fill a pickle barrel with white rice, nitro flush it, and you could likely serve that rice safely to your unborn great grandchildren.
Just treat these bottles for what they really are. They are a perfectly fine and very economical mid term storage for basic dry goods. Face it, you will just have to use them up after 2-4 years and replace with new product.
If you really want a good economical solution that doesn't bust your budget just buy some #10 empty cans from LDS and visit one of their community centers on canning day. If the wait isn't too long they cheerfully let outsiders use their can sealing equipment if you have your own cans. It's not vacuum or nitro pack but I would trust dry goods stored in those cans for a decade.
You were doing good right up until the vacuuming and gas flushing. Neither remove nearly as much O2 as an O2 absorber. And the bucket itself is not a gas barrier, hence why we use mylar bags inside it. This is why the food storage industry no longer uses those technologies. They use mylar and O2 absorbers now.
The LDS no longer uses vacuum or gas flushing either. They now use O2 absorbers.
I prefer mayo jars. The plastic is heavy duty and easy to clean and they stack nicely in boxes with a cardboard layer between them. Ofcourse years ago all mayo jars were glass and I have been using some of them for over 30 yrs. for boiling water canning (not pressure canning).
I don't know about reusing soda bottles. I've been researching plastics and chemical leeching. One source states that while recyclable plastic # 1 is safe "for single use" purposes (?!?) that it can leech when reused.
My problem with the statement "safe for single use" is that if it can leech when reused, what keeps it from leeching into the soda?
Chad
The contents are normally consumed before the plastic ages to the point it begins to break down.
Which causes one to wonder if the Tupperware your mother/grandmother/great grandmother bought in the 40/50/60/70s and passed down over the years is till safe to use.
I buy the Simply Orange, orange juice in one gallon plastic bottles it is a very heavy plastic and quite durable . I wash them out and fill with water with an ounce of colloidal silver . doing a test.
I figure that the bottle has to stand up to the citric acid in the orange juice it's got to be tough.
Again, I believe that if the o2 absorber is doing it's job the slight losses on the plastic should be covered.
My rice and beans are portioned and put in a larger bag, and several put together in the bucket and all have o2 absorbers in them all so that if the bucket is compromised the bags are covered Even if a bullet passes through the bucket the individual bags are still covered except those few damaged by the passing bullet.
I have like 20 of these Arizona Tea jugs just lying empty on top of my cabinets that I'll probably use to store stuff. I like these better than 2 liter bottles. They hold more, have a handle and are made of much thicker plastic. Plus it's Arizona Tea so it tastes good and is cheap.
Soda bottles are better than milk jugs (hard to get them clean of the milk smell). I think the cleaned soda bottles are fine for temporary storage uses. Can work great for stuff in the BOB/GHB. I freeze water in them and use them in my ice chests for the trips to town and back.
We use Arizona tea jugs in the BOL kitchen pantry for SHORT TERM storage dispensers of some items, like salt, sugar, rice, popcorn, lentils, DIY pancake syrup, etc.. Simply because they are free (after drinking the content), are sturdy & easy / handy / ergonomic to pour from.
Our BOL upper kitchen pantry shelving / cupboards are not accessible to rodents, so them getting gnawed into, isn't an issue.
I have seen people store dry foods in two liter soda bottles by filling them with CO2 using the Big Blast Caps sold at walmart for making exploding bottles targets.
I use them for water, rice, salt and sugar. I have rice that is over 5 years old and still looks good. Once filled i place them in the sun for a little bit before putting the lid on. this creates a bit of a vacuum seal. Not sure If its necessary but its no effort. My sugar and salt havnt been sealed very long to see if it effective at keeping it from clumping.
The water is probably most important. I need to add more... When ever I add 4 bottles i remind myself thats another day of survival for the 4 of us before being forced to go outside to the pond.
This is a very good reason I love the old threads being posted to, we all learn things here and sometimes we get to let folks know what we have since learned!
I still use 2 and 3 liter soda bottles to store rice and beans. Never had a problem. I have eaten rice that was 8 tears old from a sealed 2 liter bottle with no problem. I do prefer the Old Orchard juice bottles just because the shape lets me store in the pantry easier.
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