Day 11 - How to Declutter and Organise your Cans
The goal of today's
decluttering task is to remove any canned food that is either past its
expiration date or that you know your family won't eat from your cupboards. It is just one of many decluttering tasks to
help you organise the food clutter in your kitchen. Other posts include Decluttering and Organising your Herbs
and Spices, Fridge
and Freezer
Foods and tomorrow we will be tackling our Dried Foods.
We all have a few food cans in our cupboards - 99.4% of UK households
buy canned food. To ensure that you
always have healthy food to feed your family, be sure to familiarise yourself
with the shelf life, safety, and storage guidelines for canned food.
Canned Foods are most
likely to be the oldest of all the foods in your kitchen, so this is why canned
goods have been given their own 15-minute task. It’s very easy for cans to get pushed
to the back of the cupboard and forgotten about – as a result, are likely to go
past their expiration dates, and these need to be discarded.
When decluttering food, you have three options.
As with any type of food, there are three ways to declutter canned goods:
- eat it
- give it to charity,
- or throw it away.
In an ideal world, you would consume anything that
was getting old but was still safe to eat to save money.
We have all made some mistakes when purchasing food, such as purchasing something we or other family members think they will enjoy - but do not. I remember buying a few cans of macaroni and Cheese, oh boy was that a big mistake, but instead of getting rid of the rest of the cans – I left them in the cupboard – was I expecting the decluttering fairy to come and remove them?
One thing I have learned though is it is better to take food out of your
cupboards now, while it is still edible for someone else, and donate it to a
food bank instead of not eating it at all.
However, there are times when you simply need to throw the food away
because it is out of date and can be unsafe for you or anyone else to consume.
The shelf life of canned food
When you purchase food in a can, you are buying food that
has been preserved for long periods by packing them in airtight containers. Which allows you to consume the food much
later. Canned Food sales surged by 72.6 per cent in March 2020 a rise worth
£137.1 million (Grocer/Kantar 2020) due to the pandemic
It would be
unthinkable to purchase fresh sweetcorn and then attempt to eat it from your cupboard
a year later. Long before that, the corn would have gone bad. Whereas if you
buy a can of sweetcorn, you can actually do that.
Many manufacturers
will include an "expiration date" on canned goods because there is a
deterioration even with canned food over long periods. According to Canned Food UK, “Canned
food has an incredible shelf life, up to three years, which dramatically helps
to reduce food waste in the home. Plus, it means you can keep store cupboard
staples ready for when you need them.
Regarding Opened Cans.
When you open a can of food, you expose the food to the air, where bacteria can grow and spoil it just like with any other type of food. So, once a can is opened, you only have a short period to use it. Anything you don't eat right away should only be kept for a maximum of three days in your refrigerator in an airtight container.If you don't finish an open can, you might be tempted to cover it
with plastic wrap and store it in the fridge for later.
However, the iron and tin in open metal cans can seep into
the food and taint the flavour and occasionally have
harmful effects on health, so you shouldn't try to store them in the
refrigerator.
Keeping open cans in the refrigerator is particularly
risky if the food is highly acidic, like fruits and
tomatoes. People, including myself, store open cans of cat and dog food in
open cans in the fridge. Pet food has
a very high-fat content, so it is more forgiving. However, these should
not be stored for longer than 24 hours.
Keeping any food in its juices or brine is always a good
idea.
Storage advise for canned goods.
Although canned food is made to be shelf stable and keep food fresh for a long time, it still needs to be stored properly at home if you want it to last as long as the expiration dates indicate.Can Rotation
As I’m sure you are
aware, how simple it can be to forget about one or two cans of food after
stocking up on canned goods. If you don't regularly declutter your food storage
areas, this can frequently result in food waste - because by the time you find
that can again it may have gone past its expiry date. If so, it is no longer
recommended to eat those items.
Therefore, take a
few proactive measures each time you replenish the food in your cupboard. So that you won't ever have to worry about
expiration dates again, adopt the practice of can rotation, which is just a
fancy way of saying consume the oldest cans of food first.
The older cans
should be retrieved first when grabbing a can for a recipe rather than placing
new cans in the front of the cupboard - where you're more likely to grab them
first. Alternatively, you could accomplish the same thing by using a can-rotation
system like the FIFO Can Tracker.
Avoid extreme temperatures and sudden temperature changes.
Ideally, you should keep your canned goods in a dark, cool
(but not cold) space like your cupboard. Wherever you store your canned food,
you should steer clear of extreme temperature swings and extremely hot storage
spaces.
The seal inside the cans, which keeps them airtight and prevents
bacteria from growing, can be broken by the expansion of freezing water- which
can cause the contents to swell. Furthermore, extremely high temperatures can
hasten the growth of bacteria and contribute to food spoilage.
I'm aware that some people store extra canned goods
outdoors, such as in the garage, but you should think about whether that will
be a good location to store your canned goods based on the temperature
variations you experience in this area.
Canning Safety Advice.
There is no “magical” date where you can say with certainty
that canned food is not safe to eat. However,
there are tell-tale signs of spoilage or breakage in canned goods, which are
clear warning signs for you to NOT eat that can of food.
You should not eat the food inside a can if it is leaking,
rusted, or significantly dented. In a similar vein, a bulging or swollen can is
a surefire indication of food spoilage and safety issues. That bulging is a
sign of gas build-up inside the can due to bacterial activity.
Similar to small dents in cans, large dents, especially
those on the seam or rim, need to be avoided. Because of the way that canned
food is sealed, bacterial growth is kept to a minimum. However, dents to the
seam or rim are very likely to break the seal, which means the food inside may
be starting to harbour more bacterial growth, which leads to spoilage and can
make you sick.
Therefore, regardless of the date on any can, if you notice any of these issues with cans in your cupboard, you must immediately declutter these cans by throwing them in the rubbish and recycling the can.
As you can see from the picture above, we do not really store a lot of cans, as we tend to eat fresh foods more than canned ones. Plus my cans are stored in a cupboard with appliances, as my kitchen is very small.
Did you have many expired cans?