Cold Storage

Daryl took it upon himself to re-do the shelves in our cold storage.  He designed it specifically to hold canning jars, and it's so nice to be able to see what we have!  There is also plenty of space for empty jars, and a bin on the floor for rings and lids, so now there is a specific place for empty jars and all the parts that go with them.  So nice!!

There's also lots of extra space now, and I love having some empty areas on the shelves.  It really is a huge improvement on how it looked before, and there is a LOT more space!  Thanks Daryl!

I missed the real "before" pictures, but this is what the room looked like right after he tore out all the old shelves.

The beginnings of the shelves.  I bought these can organizers from Costco...but I'm not ending up using them because we can get more in the space by just lining them up on the shelves.  The concept of these is great, but they just take up too much space.

There is still a little space for the cleaning type tools. 

 All the stuff off the shelves!  We had a lot more canned goods than I realized.  And this is only a part of the stuff.  The rest was stacked in another part of the room!

Shelves are lined with oak trim.

Home canned apple juice and raspberries.  Mmmmmmmm!  It's amazing to have juice for "free", and the raspberries are always heavenly on waffles and pancakes!

So pretty!

The way of life here is so different from CA.  We buy everything in bulk because town is at least a 30 min. drive away, if not 1 1/2 hours to the real stores like Costco, Target, and Home Depot!  This little room is tucked in the corner of our basement and stays cool all the time.  When we looked at the house to buy it, the family served us watermelon from out of the cold storage.  It was refreshingly cold, like it had come out of the fridge.  I also have buckets of bulk storage on the floor, which are not pictured, and it's nice to have supplies at hand, even though I have to go downstairs to get them.