Author’s Introductory Note: I am not a carpenter or engineer. I am simply sharing concepts that have worked well for me and can be applied by anyone.
Beans, bullets, and band aids. Their volume grows over time, and we all need somewhere to put them. Mr. Rawles calls his storage space Jim’s Amazing Secret Bunker of Redundant Redundancy (JASBORR). I call mine The Temple of Doom. Managing the storage of these items is a challenge faced by all preparedness-minded individuals. Most of us have limited resources, and few would say they have enough storage space. The concepts in this article will help you get the most utility out of the space you have
available. Preparedness-minded folks tend to have their “pet” areas, be it firearms, radios, first aid, etc. Storage skills are a topic that is not glamourous to talk about, but something we all need and that we can get better at. In this article, I’ll share my storage evolution with you and walk you through my latest storage improvement project.
My Storage Journey
My wife and I have been married for 33 years. Like many couples, we started off in an apartment. We didn’t start storing food and emergency supplies until we purchased our first home five years into our marriage. It was a two-story home on a slab with an attached two car garage. We started building our food storage as soon as we purchased the home. The garage was not temperature controlled, so long-term storage food needed to be stored inside the house.
We found that #10 cans fit perfectly underneath standard height bed frames, so eventually the footprint of every bed in the house was completely filled with cardboard cases of #10 cans. Thank goodness for bed skirts to hide it! We also placed a layer of cases of #10 cans on the floor of each closet (you don’t have to lean over as far for your shoes!) and lighter cases of #10 cans of freeze-dried food on the tops of closets where no one can reach without a step ladder. Non-temperature-sensitive emergency supplies like tents, sleeping bags, and other ca
mping gear went in the garage. I used plastic shelving units purchased from Home Depot to organize my garage preparedness items. These shelves are the ones with tubular uprights that snap into plastic shelves. However, I found that these units had two major drawbacks: the shelves would sag if you put much weight on them and the dimensions of the shelves resulted in either wasted space around containers that were smaller than the shelves or insufficient space for larger sized items. These units are also at risk for tipping over in an earthquake because they aren’t fastened to the floor, ceiling, etc.
A work relocation took us to the Midwest, and we were excited to buy a house with a basement. Most of the basement was finished, but there were two rooms of about 150-200 square feet each that were unfinished. One had some mechanical equipment in it like a water heater, furnace, and sump pump, but the other room was a blank canvas. I eagerly moved my Home Depot plastic shelves into these spaces and bought more of these shelves. However, the drawbacks continued: wasted space due to items not being perfectly sized to the shelves and shelf sag due to the weight of heavy items.
After years of struggling with these problems, I thought that there had to be a better way. I considered the large steel racks sold at place like Costco. But I concluded that while they are stronger than plastic and have some adjustability for shelf height, they still feature the major drawback of having somewhat fixed internal dimensions (depth and width, and to a lesser extent, height) that will not likely fit your containers perfectly. They also have an additional drawback of having a fixed footprint that may either be too big or too small for your space, resulting in waster floor space. They are also more expensive than building your own shelves out of lumber.
I decided to build my own wood shelving to fit these two spaces and maximize how much volume could go on the shelves. The mechanical room got shelves perfectly sized in height, depth, and width for the 12-gallon hinged lid plastic storage totes that were our standard storage container at the time. The blank canvas room got shelves that were perfectly sized in height, depth, and width for cardboard boxes holding six #10 cans of long-term storage food, with the lowest shelf positioned high enough so that heavy ammo cans could go underneath, with a piece of pressure-treated lumber underneath to allow air flow around the cans.
Another work relocation within the Midwest landed us in a house with a completely unfinished, temperature-controlled basement. Oh, the possibilities! I built a wall of studs and plywood to separate a space for a possible future finished family room from a space for storage, and to provide privacy for that storage space. So began my journey of building wooden shelves in that storage area, customized to the space available (the outline of the concrete foundation) and our storage needs. I built shelves sized for the dimensions of our standardized storage containers.
Viewing Storage as a Holistic System
I think that it can be useful to view storage as a system, with components that all work together. Harmonizing the components will increase the efficiency of your system. You currently have a storage system whether you realize it or not. The question is: how dysfunctional is your storage system? Components of storage systems include: the space available, shelving optimized to efficiently fit your containers, standardized container sizes, labeling, inventorying, and rotation of supplies that need to be rotated. If you don’t have standardized containers now, set a goal to transition to standard sizes as you can afford it, and look for sales. Remember that big containers should be for lighter items in order to minimize the risk of injury. I think that getting rid of items that you no longer have a need for should also be considered a part of the maintenance of your system.
My Current Storage Improvement Project
Although we are empty nesters now, we have been increasing the depth of our food storage larder in case we ever need to provide for our growing extended family, which now includes our childrens’ spouses and our grandchildren. The additional food storage is packaged in 5- and 6-gallon buckets and cardboard cases of #10 cans of food. I was thinking of how to increase our storage capacity. We have a row of existing shelves that held larger totes for Christmas trees, seasonal decorations, etc. with these 42” long totes oriented sideways. There was an open spot of floorspace where I figured that I could build a new shelving unit sized to fit those large holiday totes end-on, with room to spare. This would allow me to reconfigure the existing shelves that previously held the holiday decoration totes for food buckets, two deep, cases of #10 cans, and other items.
The vacant space available for the project is defined by the demising wall between the family room area and storage area, a concrete foundation wall, the house’s main waste line, and a metal post supporting an I-beam holding up the weight of the house. The space allowed for shelves that would be 10’ long by 42” deep by 94” high.
Every project has its own complications, and some of the idiosyncrasies of the available space were:
The totes are actually 42” long, and the deck of the shelves would only be actually 39” deep due to the 1 ½” each in the front and back that are taken up by the uprights. This means that the totes would not be able to be positioned behind an upright.
The steel support beam for the I-beam would prevent pulling a tote out of the front of the shelves in that spot, necessitating some shuffling of totes to use that space.
Given the height of the totes and desired number of shelves, I would not be able to have the lowest shelf high enough to store things like ammo cans or water containers under it.
All of my previous basement shelves have been fastened at the top to the floor joists of the main floor of the house (the unfinished “ceiling” of the basement) but in the area under consideration there is HVAC ducting suspended below the joists, so this project would not allow the shelves to be fastened above. I wasn’t too worried about it given that the shelves would be unlikely to tip over given that they are 42” deep. They would also be fastened to both the floor and the demising wall behind them.
This was also my first shelf-building project in our empty-nest phase of life; my prior projects involved the assistance of my sons who now live out of state. I didn’t want to take up my wife’s time to tediously stand around holding boards upright while I got them level or vertical and fastened them if it was not necessary, so I found ways to do this project by myself, including liberal use of clamps and temporary installation of brackets and scrap lumber supports with screws to hold the uprights and rails vertical or level in place until I made permanent attachments.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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