It’s a pretty basic concept. But some people choose to ignore it or quite simply forget it. If your food storage is hidden away in a little-accessed closet, dark basement, or an out-of-reach cupboard there is a tendency for the stored food to be out of sight and out of mind. Rarely with food storage does absence make the heart grow fonder. Until and unless its use becomes critical, and it is needed for survival, that is.
The simple fact is that a large percentage of those with food storage don’t rotate it, thus having to dispose of it or feed it to the pigs. And you didn’t pay thousands of dollars for food to feed to swine. Try as you may with the conventional method of storing canned food, even putting a date on the canned goods and organizing them in a nice and orderly fashion, does that ensure any better that you’re going to eat the food this time around as you promised yourself? Or does it just let you know the exact date when you need to make your next visit to the dump or the pig sty? Sure, you had a burst of energy and good intentions by getting a marker out and lining the cans up with military-style precision, but these inanimate objects won’t salute your efforts, and you may find that you are no closer to your goal of consuming the canned goods on schedule as you’d hoped.
At any rate, there is no method that is 100% foolproof. Canned goods will never jump out of your closet to track you down and aggressively persuade you their innards are losing their freshness and their time has come to be consumed. But if you take a principled approached, you can increase your odds tremendously of getting the food from where it is stored initially to its ultimate intended destination—a.k.a. the great recesses of your twisting intestines.
Human nature is keen to procrastinate until it is everlastingly too late. Fortunately, despite our busy lives, we have available ready access to technologies that can greatly enhance our lives and help us have an almost built-in method for success. Much like an employer can automatically withdraw a specifically assigned dollar amount to be deposited into a 401(k), you can also nearly automate the food storage rotation process. The genius lies in requiring a thoughtful commitment once only! You decide to incorporate a food storage rotation system, and you’re set on autopilot. There is no hard work involved.
FIFO (first in, first out), an accounting concept for inventory valuation, suggests that the first item added to inventory is also the first item to be removed. In a food storage rotation system this creates a perpetual motion of replacing the later-dated products in the “loop” with ever-newer ones, never allowing any individual item to become outdated or risk obsolescence. An example of an efficient FIFO food rotation system is that which can be found in Wal-Mart on the soup aisle. Once a can of soup is removed from the shelf system, another one rolls gracefully into the much-coveted front spot, awaiting its turn to be the next one chosen, pridefully on display.
As long as there is a steady flow of usage (store what you will eat), the food will not go bad, and the food will be on-demand and maintain its freshness. And remember to put your food storage rotation system where it is accessible. Gosh… really! Place your food storage rotation system within reasonable reach, and avoid damage to your rotator cuff system. Once you implement a food storage rotation system, you’ll never again do it manually.
Related Posts:
Food Storage: Protecting Your Hard Won Foodstuffs
Food Storage “Second -Aid” Kit: The Ready-Recall of Sweet Memories
Food Storage: What Keeps the Longest?
Food Storage: Enough and More (Plus Earthquake Proofing)
3 Responses to “Food Storage Rotation”
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Bruce Hopkins
The intent of this article is good … but uninformed. Dehydrated foods will store for decades. (It’s been eaten 30+ years old and found to be fine.)
In addition, 2 times in our history, wet-packed foods over 100-years-old have been found, one time in England and one time in the US, and found to be edible. In the US find, it was also declared to be still nutritious by a food laboratory.
Baby Bath Tubs
Cool idea, the food storage rotation system. Makes it much more automatic.
kettlebell workouts
Rotating food is hard to remember to do. But, it must be important. I know I have had to throw out expired food in the past.