Canning storage

New cabinet

Hurrah, hurrah, we have new storage for the homemade canned goods. I read recently that you are not supposed to store anything in the room that houses the furnace. I wish!! Perhaps if the furnace had been placed a bit differently in our basement so it didn’t use up 1/6 of the entire square footage maybe I would have a separate room for my canned goods. As it is we have been stacking and bending over and shuffling and rearranging until we can’t unbend. Last year we purchased a nice little cabinet, but soon found it is not up to the weight of the quart jars, and certainly can’t hold much in terms of volume.

Small cabinet now houses the pints.

Tuesday when we were in Bismarck to see the All-Star Basketball game, we made a few shopping stops. On a whim, I checked into some storage units and picked this one out. I knew we didn’t have much space, and from the outlet on the wall to the open door, there is about one inch to spare. There is even room under the electrical box to store all of the empty jars. Today James and I spent about two hours stacking and restacking, and I think it looks great. We even took the time to sort the empty jars by pint or quart and by wide-mouth or regular, which will make it much easier to grab them when it is canning time this fall.

I have always had a good idea of what we had in the basement, but James was totally surprised by what we had in storage. He questioned why we even put in a garden this year. Ha, Ha! I am seeing that many of the items we have left over, we will not have access to this year. There won’t be any plums or apples this year, but we will have pumpkins, which might mean pumpkin butter or something along that line. I also was surprised to hear that he is interested in more tomato juice. That is like the second easiest thing to can, so I can see we will be doing more jars of that, and lots less of salsa unless someone starts eating that soon. That third row on the new rack is 3/4 full of salsa. Oh yes and now that the basil is growing I am thinking tomato-basil soup is another top priority.

Today’s work has given me so much enthusiasm that I think we should pick one project each day until school starts in the fall, and we might be amazed at how great the house looks. Hmmm, I think I might go give him the news. I will let you know tomorrow how that worked for me.