Shelf Reliance

Back when we lived in Provo I saw a food storage rotation system on sale at Wal-Mart for something like $350-$450. Having recently gotten married and having my priorities all get shuffled around, I immediately realized that buying this was a must. Unfortunately we were living in a quaint little duplex and the only places we could have put such a large contraption would have been next to our front door or next to our bed. As finances and space limitations conspired against me I had to pass the opportunity up and hope that I would have another opportunity down the line to pick one up.

That opportunity was Thursday. We went to Costco in the morning to pick up some stuff to get ready for my family's visit to Boise that weekend. That week happened to be the week that this kid from Provo was in town selling food storage rotation systems from a company called Shelf Reliance. We stopped to talk with him for a moment and when he told me that their largest system was on sale for $270. That was still a lot, but then I remembered that the last time I had seen such a system on the market it was priced at around $100-$200 more. I pretty much made up my mind that we were going to buy one within about a minute-and-a-half, but I needed to deliberate a bit longer just to not feel like this was an impulse buy or that I was being totally irresponsible by making such a large purchase decision so swiftly. Then I remembered that I've been wanting one of these for several years now and haven't even seen them on sale since that day back at Wal-Mart in Provo, and that I actually just figured out a good food storage program that we've been carrying out for two months now. Sold!

We picked that puppy up on our way out and my dad helped me put it together on Friday after they got into town. We have a nice place for it right next to our freezer in the garage and my dad had the brilliant idea to build a rolling platform for it. That way, when it weighs 7,452 pounds all full of cans and we need to move somewhere, we won't have to dead lift it straight from the floor. So as soon as we got it assembled we took a quick trip to Home Depot and bought some sturdy 3/4" plywood (and almost ruined the Home Depot guy's day when he misheard the dimensions and cut a piece 27.5" x 25.5" in stead of the 37.5" x 25.5" I'd told him - he acted like his boss was going to take it out of his paycheck or make him run laps all night or something), wheels, and screws. We put together the platform with Corbin's help and attached the storage unit and IT IS NOW THE COOLEST THING EVER!

I haven't actually put any cans in it yet, though I'm happy to say that we have a whole bunch a green beans and olives that will soon be calling that rack their home. The system also came with a cool set of organizer magnets that can: 1) help you know what your cans are if you can't read the label (duh) 2) or help you know what things you still need based on the labels underneath all of your empty sections. Mitzi doesn't think they're that awesome but I DO!

They also have some that are blank that you can write on with a dry erase market to customize your storage experience. Awesome!