Friday, June 4, 2010

Sliding shelf makes storing and sorting canned foods easier

My husband just installed a handy device for my brother - a sliding shelf inside a kitchen cabinet.    My brother is not doing too well, is over weight and suffers from emphysema.   He has a very deep kitchen cupboard where he keeps all kinds of canned goods and miscellaneous stuff.  Visiting last week I noticed that it was chock full of canned goods so I went through it.   I found multiple cans of the same few items - canned spinach, beans, soups - with expiration dates as far back as 2007.  We sorted the food into really expired, recently expired, about to expire and okay.   The first two categories went to the dump and the "about to expire and okay" went back in the cupboard.   Then I tackled the CAUSE of the build up.... My brother is too fat and too weak to dig into the back of the cupboard. Rather than find what's there, he just buys more.

To make his search easier my husband installed a shallow drawer on slides. The drawer sits on the shelf and has a drawer pull so he can it out to see what's there.   This way he doesn't have to bend down low or reach into the back to find canned goods.  We were worried about the weight of the drawer and slider mechanism but they weighed far less than the 40 or so 15-20 ounce cans of food that we tossed away.   I also reorganized the cupboard so that little-used items are on the bottom shelf - trays, a blender, baking pans, electric fry pan, etc....   My brother will never use these things again so they went to the bottom and the food and few items he'll use went on the higher shelf and sliding drawers where it's easier to reach. 

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