First, let me acknowledge the fact that our current buckets are not food grade buckets. At the time, we used what we had since we didn’t have the money to go out and buy new buckets. Now I’m looking for 6 gallon food grade buckets but haven’t been able to find them. If you know where to get them, please feel free to comment below or send me an email. We’d really like to switch out the buckets but I would like to go with a 6 gallon if at all possible.
That being said… I love love love my new bulk food storage unit. I had found a metal unit by Shelf Reliance that was around $130 on sale and it held 8 buckets. I loved the idea and showed it to my husband… who also loved the idea. Our current storage was stacking the buckets on top of each other and well, that’s just a pain. It never failed that the bucket we needed next would be on the bottom. lol
After reading about the 8-bucket unit online, we headed to our laundry room and discovered… the corner the unit could go in was too small for two buckets side-by-side. It wouldn’t work for us. Disappointing. My husband then got the idea that he could custom build something that would fit in that spot and we’d at least be able to get some of the buckets off the floor.
After measuring some more, we decided we’d wait until the baby came. He was going to take a week off once our little one arrived and that would allow him to build a unit. Once our little guy came (Thurs night), we headed off to Home Depot the following Monday to buy supplies. 🙂
It took my husband 2.5 days from start to finish. He wasn’t expecting it to take quite that long but he had no instructions or plans to follow so it was a measure as you go, figure it out along the way type of project. As he started working on it, he realized that he would have some extra space to the side of the bucket. We had 50 lbs bags of potatoes, onions, etc laying around in the kitchen and laundry room that we needed a place to put so he came up with making built-in bins to use up that extra space.
The bins don’t hold a full 50 lbs of potatoes, onions, etc but they do hold more than you would think. We turned a cluttered corner of the laundry room into a wonderfully organized storage unit that fits perfectly. There was also enough room on top to slip a piece of leftover wired shelf so we could put some things on top without them falling through (currently spaghetti squash and sweet potatoes).
I don’t have an exact cost but we know we spent right around $100 for all the wood and screws my husband had to buy. The unit holds 4 buckets, has 4 bins (we have since eaten all the oranges and just put 20 lbs of apples in the top bin so we know we can store 20 lbs of small apples in a bin) and 1 storage shelf on the top. The buckets are tilted just right so we can fill them up most of the way and still open them without the contents spilling out all over the place.
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