Apartments and freezers/food storage

[lalemma]

If you live an apartment and have a freezer, where do you put it?

I'd really like us to get a freezer - I think it would really help us even out our food budget: right now I feel like we overspend on things like meat, since we don't have the space to buy and store a quarter cow or half a pig. But I'm not sure where we'd put it. Ideas?

Also - and LDS MDCers, this is probably the question for you - where do you store bulk foods in your home if you live in an home where you don't have a separate pantry? I'd love to start buying more bulk foods, but I'm at a loss to think of where I'd store 25 pounds of black beans.

Any other clever food storage ideas appreciated as well!

[sleepypeanutsmom]

Bulk food can be stored in closets (in plastic buckets with lids or large glass jars) or under beds.

If buying/having room for an extra freezer is hard you could see if anyone you know that lives close has a freezer with lots of extra space that you could use. That way you could go over every couple of weeks and get what you need.

[mum4vr]

Not an apartment, but it was a tiny mobile home. I put a small (the 3' or so cube size) deep freeze where the fridge was designed to be (and used it for extra counter space to boot). Then I tucked a small "dorm fridge" into a corner at one end of the kitchen table (this became counter space for pint sized cooks-- the perfect place for DD, then 6ish, to knead a lump of dough when I made bread). If we were careful not to overshop or clutter it up, the dorm fridge worked fine for a family of 4.

I can't wait to see what others do w bulk foods-- we have a time storing ours, and we do have a pantry! I get grumpy about spending money on plastic-- I hate plastic-- to store our beautiful organic bulk foods.

[happyhats]

we have a small chest freezer. Now it's actually in our kitchen in the corner with our table. It's a little crowded but it works. Before it was in my daughter's room. It was in the corner, then later in the closet. We only moved it out because I'm pregnant and dd got a toy kitchen set, and we needed more space in there.

I used to use the linen closet in my hallway for an extra pantry. Now its toy overflow. But it did work great because often a linen closet is wasted space-towels can go in the bathroom under the sink, sheets go in the bedrooms, etc. We have a fairly large set of cabinets in our kitchen though so with careful rearranging it works out.

[Attached2Elijah]

We have a chest freezer and we, luckily, have a rather large utility room that we put our's into. We store our bulk food in our laundry room in large plastic totes.

[surrogate]

you can stuff a small freezer anywhere! Hallway, bedroom, living room...i have one that is about 4X2 and right now it is next to the washer and dryer in the util room. Last house it was in the kitchen, and before that, hallway

[Denvergirlie]

I used to have a small freezer (a bit larger than the dorm sized cube refrig) in my kitchen. I found a piece of granite at the thrift store and put that on top as countertop so that space could be used.
I also at one time had a small chest freezer on my apartment balcony, with a power cord running out the door.

Dry food - under beds, closets, any place to you put it, it need not be in the kitchen.

[fierrbugg]

My mom is mormon - and we grew up in a small house w/ seven people - so she used every nook and cranny she could for food storage. She'd stuff canned goods under the beds (seriously most of my life, "go see if there are any green beans under my bed" was not an uncommon phrase). I even remember when we moved between 2 states and had to sell my bed frame (due to lack of room in the moving truck), I ended up with boxes of #10 cans holding my mattresses off of the ground. And it's easy to make stacks of bulk storage look like something else. My mom had a barrel thing she used for food storage, but tucked it in a corner with a table cloth and it looked like an end table. Use extra space - put shelves in wherever there's extra wall space, etc.

Food Storage Made Easy has an article with tips about storage in small spaces.

[Vaske]

Our lease prohibits freezers, so we have been learning to pressure can. It is nice to have canned meat on hand, no thawing needed.

[spiderdust]

Under-bed storage has already been mentioned, although when I had a small living space I also stored flats of veggies in the cabinet under the sink, in the linen closet, on the closet floor in the bedroom, etc.

[linguistmama]

We have a small freezer and it's in our living room right now. I put a nice piece of cloth on it so it looks good We are also LDS and just converted the space under our bed to food storage. We got rid of the box spring and put the mattress on top of some wood with large buckets of oats and wheat under it to hold it up. No we can fit a ton of canned goods etc under there! We will also be putting canned goods under our dd's bunk bed.

[maciascl]

Originally Posted by lalemma

Also - and LDS MDCers, this is probably the question for you - where do you store bulk foods in your home if you live in an home where you don't have a separate pantry?

Forgive me for possibly sounding stupid, but what does being LDS have to do with food storage. I am not meaning to be snarky, I am honestly curious.

I am interested in what others do as well since we recently moved to a small apt & have very little food storage available and no garage for a seperate freezer.

[zebra15]

Originally Posted by maciascl

Forgive me for possibly sounding stupid, but what does being LDS have to do with food storage. I am not meaning to be snarky, I am honestly curious.

LDS believe in food storage. Most LDS families have at least 1 yr food storage for the family.

Just google, LDS family food storage, or family preparedness

[OkiMom]

We have a chest freezer in our dining room. Im in the process of sewing a cover for it so it can look like a side table. I figure that way it can double as a place to lay out food when we have people over.
As for food storage, Im LDS but I have to admit we don't have a year supply. We started building up, moved to another country and we couldn't take the storage with us. We were facing a move again in 3 years and I couldn't justify the cost of building up the storage just to have to get rid of it. If we did we have a storage closet we could use. You can also use beneath basically any piece of furniture (if you have ever seen the movie The RM it has a funny part where they converted their food storage into pieces of furniture).