So you’re a savvy shopper and you’re saving by buying food in bulk and cooking a lot of your own meals. But how do you store all that food, especially grain? Your wallet isn’t the only one who likes a big stash of wheat, so do mice and other critters. To solve this problem, Laura over at the Heavenly Homemakers blog likes to hit up the bakery department of her local groceries and ask for their empty 5-gallon buckets of frosting.

She says most were overjoyed to get rid of their buckets and only one of them charged her a dollar a bucket. Even at that rate that’s still cheaper than those nice buckets with the gamma seal you might get online for around $3.99.

To get rid of bugs, one of her commenters says what she does is put down some dry ice in the bottom of the bucket and lay a piece of paper over it before pouring in the bulk food. “It displaces the oxygen in the bucket and even if there are bugs or eggs, they won’t have any oxygen to survive,” she says.

Two five gallon buckets will handle a 50-lb bag of wheat. “I now have a big stash of white frosting buckets full of hard white wheat just waiting to be turned into bread, tortillas, muffins, pancakes, cakes, pies, cookies, pretzels, donuts, buns, bagels…the possibilities are endless!” writes Laura.

How to Store Bulk Grain [Heavenly Homemakers]
How I Store Bulk Food [Heavenly Homemakers]

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