Sealing Food With Food Sealer

I hope that everyone had a wonderful Christmas. I know I enjoyed the day despite my horrible chest cold. After cleaning up the house for the holidays I had some dry goods that needed to be sealed away in Mylar. A lot of sisters from my ward have been asking me how I do this. So Friday we set up our assembly line and started sealing away. We did dehydrated onions, dehydrated carrots, potato flakes, oats, and apple slices.

You will want to fill your Mylar bags.

Once the bag is full give it a firm tap on the table to settle the food in the bag. You don't want to over fill the bag or it won't seal properly. Add your oxygen absorber.

Line up the top of the bag and flatten the top out holding it tightly at the top. Make sure there are not wrinkles or folds in the Mylar.

Place the bag into the sealer and seal the bag. Making sure nothing is in the path of the sealer.

This isn't the best picture but, I wanted to show you a seal that is not a good seal. If you notice that there is a crease in the Mylar. You will have to go and reseal above or below this to ensure a good seal.

Then have someone cute label the bag. You don't want it to be a mystery down the road.

Then someone handsome needs to place them into boxes.

And last but not least. Someone that is NUTS!

What should I do with all this food?

I've had food storage for as long as I can remember as a young married person. It wasn't much but as our family grew so did our food storage. These last two years my husband and I have really tried to obtain our full year supply of food, water and fuel for our family. We don't have a decent basement in our house. So we have decided to transform one of our bedrooms into our food storage room. At times it seems to become our catch all room and I had decided that I was done walking over everything just to get a can of tuna. So yesterday my husband was in town and we decided to completely rearrange the room. I love it now. I thought I would share what we did.

After cleaning out everything that didn't belong in there, I could finally walk around. We decided that only food would be allowed in the room. So all my canning items, dehydrators, grinders and mixers had to find a new home. That freed up alot of space. I have these awesome shelves that I purchased at Costco that I used. They are really well made and rather inexpensive. I think they were less than $60.00 a unit. Each unit comes with 5 adjustable shelves. And the thing I love more than anything is the fact that each shelf will individually hold up to 1500 lbs.

I have rearranged my storage room so many times its not funny. I always think I have the solution but I never do. I will count up everything, write it down in hopes that I can enter it into the computer and print it out. I never actually get to it and by the time I do the quantity of items have changed or I have added more to it. So this weekend my brilliant husband had the perfect idea. And I have to admit I think it is going to work. (Don't tell him I even admitted that!) He went along and made a grid like system on our shelves. The first set of shelves is labeled A. The second set of shelves B and so on down the line. Then he marked each row with a number. We decided that the top shelf would be called Top. So we have rows 1,2,3,4,5 and top.

He then brought in a piece of wood and placed it across two of our water barrels. He brought in an old computer that we no longer use and hooked it up. He told me I don't have and excuse anymore to not enter my items into the computer. He made it so handy for me and I just love him for that. He helped me put all my items together the way I wanted them. We counted them up and added them to the computer. I also added to my spreadsheet where they were on the grid. I know that all my quart jars of canned food is on the first shelves of A,B and C. And all my pints are on the second shelves of A,B and C. All my baking items are on C3 and all my fruits that are open cases are on E3 Etc. It makes it so easy to find things especially if I have to send one of my kids in to get something. I can just say go get me some tuna from D4. I just love it. Hope this gives you some ideas of your own. Let me know what works for you.