Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Freaky Mormon

Warning: Unless the thought of white buckets makes you giddy I highly recommend you stop reading now. But if you are a Mormon Nerd like me, proceed.
If you know what these are you might be a Mormon.
If you have more than one of these in your home you are Mormon, or soon will be (resistence is futile).
If you have 20 or more of these in a climate controlled room and they have been packed using a dry ice method... well, there is just no hope for you. You are a Freaky Mormon.

Me? I'm a Freaky Mormon wannabe, just a Mormon Nerd. I only have 18 buckets, and they aren't all 6 gallon size. I don't pack mine with dry ice. And I don't have a climate controlled food storage room to enshrine them in... yet. =) If you aren't LDS you might be wondering what is with the bucket madness. FOOD! I have wheat, oats, rice, salt, sugar, flour, honey, and hot cocoa in my buckets. We nerdy Mormons like to fantasize about the economic system of our country crashing and then showing everyone how smart we were for keeping a mini-mart in our cupboards and closets. Hey, don't knock it. Have you watched season 1 of the TV show Jericho? It could happen.

Anyway, I'm here to share with you my favorite trick for being a thrifty Mormon Nerd. Buying food buckets can be pricey, especially when you need a lot of them. But did you know that bakeries go through myriads of food buckets a day and just toss them? And did you know that if you call these bakeries, and ask nicely, they will often give you their buckets for free? Sure, you will have to clean them real good before using, but you have to wash the clean ones you buy anyway. And the 3 gallon bakery buckets fit in my sink a lot better than the big ones do.

I usually call my local grocery store's bakery and say, "Hi, I was wondering if you give away your empty icing buckets? You do? Great. Do they have lids with them? Would you mind if I come pick them up in the next 15 minutes?" Albertson's recently tried to charge me for their buckets so I called Safeway and they were more than happy to give me five buckets with lids absolutely free of charge. Make sure you don't use pickle, vinegar, or garlic spread buckets because they can give the food you store a bad flavor. But if your rice, flour, or sugar has a very mild (I've never noticed it) taste of chocolate, maple, or vanilla it really won't hurt a thing.


And see these lids? They have a black rubber gasket that makes them air tight. When you buy food buckets you have to pay a premium to get lids with gaskets.



Here is the rice that I bought back during the big rice scare of 2008. To quote my husband when I asked him if we should join the rice rush, "We have no need to panic... but we don't want the panicked people to get all the rice." Those yellow bags are medium grain rice from California that is especially good for making sushi rice. Because it has special cooking instructions I make sure to cut the instructions out and tape them to the side of the bucket.

Behold, my cheap nerdiness.

Are you one of those super cool Freaky Mormons? You know who you are. I bet you have blogged about your buckets. If so, share the link in your comment.

26 comments:

Rachel said...

That's a great bucket idea! I hate having to spend more money on storage containers when the packaging the food comes in isn't sturdy enough! Sometimes it's all I can do to get the food in the first place!! :)

Michelle Glauser said...

Great idea. Some day . . .

Rachel said...

I am not a freaky or nerdy Mormon (but I might be freaky and/or nerdy anyway), but cool suggestion to save money.

(By the way - I'm glad you have a sense of humor about the Mormon thing... I lived in a neighborhood that seemed to contain an entire ward and I LOVED it. We were super-popular because everyone wanted to claim us as converts!)

And WAY too funny about your husband's comment about the rice!

Anonymous said...

Dang! Only 18 buckets. Multi colored lids though. Will that put me in the cool club? :-)

LeeAnn

Lisa Merkley said...

Yup...I have the buckets. I didn't go out and count them though. But I did do the dry ice thing. Works well, actually. And I've used buckets from grocery stores, too and I like the smaller ones better. They don't get as heavy and I also like the gasket things. Thanks for the idea however long it was ago that you told me about it!

Richelle said...

We have just a few buckets, but lots of #10 cans. The other day we had a moving guy come to give an estimate of how much stuff we have and he saw all our cans. So he asked if we were Mormons. He said the only place he sees cans of food storage is from the Mormons. :)

LizzyP said...

I'm totally calling my grocery store tonight!

Awesome Mom said...

We would have a more extensive food storage, but moving so often kinda puts a crimp in that. I am still halfheartedly rebuilding from our last move.

Steph said...

Brings back memories of when I used to work in a grocery store bakery. Buckets and buckets of donut frosting! Grocery stores are a great place to get boxes for moving too.

Montserrat said...

Hmmm....we use so much food at our house that we use 5 or 6 gallon buckets. I'm thinking that the 3 gallon size would be perfect for other things we don't use as much of like masa harina (for corn tortillas) or powdered sugar. And I can't believe I never knew to try the bakery!!!!!!!!!

Here's my post with a few pictures on our food storage. We have about 64 buckets at the moment with plans to expand to 100.

Well Stocked Pantry

Anonymous said...

What a cool find! You officially rock in the pantry-nerd clique!

Rebecca Blevins said...

I am now officially suffering from bucket envy!

Great score!

An Ordinary Mom said...

One day, when we have more space, I will become a bucket nerd. So envious am I :) !!

Can't wait to see what kind of fun Google searches you will end up with with "Freaky Mormon" as your blog post title :) !!

32 Flavors said...

Guilty! We have the icing buckets dans notre maison. They are the best things ever. Nowhere near 20 however. I'm well on my way to that amount though...

Sonja said...

I'M NOT WORTHY!!

I live right smack dab in the middle of mormon-ville and my food storage is in sad shape.

Thanks for the bakery bucket idea. You rock.

Amber M. said...

Freaky Mormon??

Freaky COOL!! LOVE the buckets.

Michal said...

oooh, i can't wait to call my local grocery store bakery.

i wish i had a climate controlled room. or a basement like all those utah mormons.

i, along with everyone else, am upping my food storage these days. it's always been a work in progress, plus my family keeps growing, and thus our needs to store.:)

Michal said...

here's a fun food storage blog i've been following lately:

http://mormonfoodstorage.blogspot.com/

Jennifer @ Fruit of My Hands said...

My mom does this all the time! Around here people always beat me to it, but I can get buckets pretty cheap at food storage sales.

Count me with the nerds.

Jess said...

I do not even remember how I found your blog....but I'm sure that in the small world that is mormonism, we know some of the same people.

I love the idea of getting buckets from local bakeries. You're a genius. Salamat. :)

Becky said...

Being in the military has put a damper on my food storage, I still have some, and need to restock, but I see people get sent to germany and can't take it with them......you have re-energized me...

Scribbit said...

Superfreaky Mormon :) Sounds like the makings of a great song.

Anonymous said...

ICING BUCKETS~~~! best idea! I have been wanting to do this but because of my gluten issues, wary of asking for old bakery buckets. Icing RARELY if ever has gluten in it! yes! thanks for the awesome idea~

Lara said...

Well you know I'm freaky enough to have blogged about my buckets.

http://www.lazyorganizer.com/blog/?p=681

http://www.lazyorganizer.com/blog/?p=730

I don't know if we'll need more any time soon but now I know where to get them!

CC said...

I'm not Mormon...but I do try to keep some extra food supplies in case of emergency. Started with Y2K, and I've tried to keep it since then. My problem? I've got about 2 days worth of food stored up right now! We literally have no storage. No basement, tiny closets, etc. And we have rodent and ant problems to boot. What suggestions can you give me, 'cuz I love this idea, but don't know how to make it happen in our small home!

ThrtnWmsFam said...

Loved the article. Hope you check out mine! The only bad part of getting a used icing bucket is cleaning them. The grease from the icing is very hard to get out!

Link: http://www.survival-cooking.com/2009/02/long-term-food-storage-containers-icing.html

Thanks... Vikki at www.survival-cooking.com