It never rains but it pours

[pozorvlak]

We try to buy dry goods (rice, porridge, lentils, couscous...) in bulk, which is great for reducing cost and trips to the shops, but more of a hassle once you get the stuff home - the packaging is usually hard or impossible to re-seal, vulnerable to rodents, and a pain to pour from. For a while now, we've been using a system taught to us by dynix (and

Comments

[jackalopemonger]

This is a fantastic hack. I began making yogurt at home a month ago, so now I can do something with the leftover cartons (besides recycle them).

[pozorvlak]

Glad to be of assistance :-) Let me know how well it works with US milk bottles! Actually, if you could take some pictures that would be great - I was thinking of putting this up on Instructables.com.

[antoniabaker]

Oh my lord, that is best domestic goddess tip since you froze hot curry ice cubes!

[pozorvlak]

Fear my domesticity :-)

[johnckirk]

As others have said, that is pretty nifty :) Just one silly question though:

"We maintain a working set of all our most common ingredients within easy reach, and stack our reserves along the top of the kitchen cupboards for when the working set needs replenishment."

Are your reserves identical to the working set? If so, do you wait until the the working container is empty, then replace it with a reserve, or do you keep topping up the working container from the reserve?

[pozorvlak]

The reserves consist of backups for the most common ingredients, plus rarer ingredients that we don't mind getting down when needed. We wait until the working bottle of (say) rice is empty before swapping it out for a full one - this minimises trips up the step-ladder and ensures that rice that's been exposed to the air is used first.