Home canned food storage

[Emerald]

I am redesigning my pantry to maximize my space & for ease of use and was wondering how all of you store your home canned goods. I am building self-feeding storage units for the store bought cans (cansolidators) to easily organize. Right now I have 18 inch tall/12 inch wide shelves and I have cans stacked so that I have to move everything each time I buy more and it is very time consuming/annoying rotating them. I know you aren't supposed to stack your home canned goods, but right now I am and I feel it is a disaster waiting to happen.
I am trying to decide how best to organize and maximize my space for quart/pint/1/2 pint jars. Anyone have any ideas other than just building the shelves to the height of each size jar?
Also, I am in the New Madrid fault zone and an earthquake is a possible concern. Right now, I feel that even a small tremor would knock everything down off the shelves and all the work & food would be wasted! What I am thinking of is just making the shelves the height of the jar and then putting a board across the front like a lip to keep the jars from falling out and this would of couse be attached to the wall. Basically, the whole wall would have to fall before it cause the jars to shake lose. I appreciate any thoughts or ideas to help me out with this project.

[Junie]

I'd go with the single-jar-sized shelves, but if you really don't want to, you can put a board on top of a layer of jars and put another layer of jars on that. The board spreads out the weight of the jars so there isn't too much pressure on your lower lids.

Another option is to buy jars in reclosable boxes (the kind with flaps instead of plastic wrapped), put the filled jars in the boxes, and stack the boxes. Same principle as the board.

[CanNerd]

I've been using a wire-cube shelving that I get at my local Target store relatively inexpensively. It allows me to build the shelving to fit the height and width of the storage -- one being the area under the stairs.

I then use cut-up boxes for cardboard to put between layers for stacking. I also put a thin strip of cardboard vertically between rows to give some bumping protection in an earthquake. It's finalized with bungee cords horizontally across the shelving to prevent jars from falling out.

[Emerald]

I drew up my shelving plans yesterday and hopefully I can get dh to start working on them. As soon as I finish redoing my pantry I will post some pictures of what I did.

[cinelu]

Emerald,

Can't wait to see the pics. I currently store my things on a concrete ledge in the cellar under the house. Need to add more shelves, as the ledge is currently full. I am currently thinking about the best way to do this.

Cindy

[silvergramma]

i use one of my bedrooms on the first floor as a pantry it is right off the dining room which is right off the kitchen.. i have mostly my store bought canned goods on the shelves and i have a lot of my home canned goods in banana boxes on the floor ( cooler there).. i would only stack one or two of the boxes due to the weight.. yes it is a disaster waiting to happen...you can build shelves for these babies out of 2x4's and build them to hold one layer of jars with many shelves.. go only as deep as you can reach at arms length..

[bear-in-wv]

hmm

you might also consider fastening the sheles to the walls with l brackets in several places, it will reduce the swaying and rcoking in the event of a quake.

bear

[Emerald]

For anyone interested, I have posted info on my new pantry in other food related issues.

[bookwormom]

I have a small walk in pantry that holds 700 jars plus with ease. Husband noticed that most shelves generally waste a lot of overhead space. He used a jar to measure how high to space the shelves. Not much waste at all. Now store bought cans are a different problem.

[firegirl969]

I have used lumber stacked on concrete blocks. DHs grandad also had shelves made into the old barn walls that a single row of jars will sit in. It holds about 150 jars.