The Unexpected Household Item You Should Use To Store Canned Food

Canned foods are pantry staples that are great to keep on hand. Even though canned foods do eventually spoil, the shelf life is longer than fresh food. During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, Spam canned food sales soared by more than 70% (per Bloomberg). People began to stockpile canned goods, knowing their pantry would be stocked in case they got sick or were unable to leave the house. According to Quartz, the increase in canned goods purchases led some food manufacturers to deal with aluminum can shortages.

Pandemic or not, it's a good idea to at least have some canned food items in the pantry. Some of the best-canned foods to keep on hand are tomatoes for making pasta sauces, tuna for quick and easy lunches, and chili for a comforting dinner. One of the issues with having loads of cans is figuring out how to store them in a semi-organized manner. Food storage boxes can get expensive to purchase, especially if you need multiple. Instead of emptying your wallet, try looking around your house for a simple canned food storage solution.

When it comes to storing your canned food, you don't always need to purchase a special product. A household magazine holder works great to reserve canned food in an organized manner (via Kitchn). Magazine holders can be used in the refrigerator to store easily reachable soda cans. According to Food52, the extra-wide magazine holders can stock up standard-sized canned goods, as well as larger size cans of food, like tomato sauce. When using smaller cans, they can easily be stacked to save even more space.

If you don't have a spare magazine holder in your house, you can easily find them reasonably priced at discount stores, like Dollar Tree. For those with a lot of canned goods to tuck away, one hack is to use multiple magazine holders and organize the cans by the type of food (per One Crazy House). If you want a challenge, try organizing the cans by color for an aesthetically pleasing pantry.