Freezed-dried storage...advice?

Not all my freeze-dried food are in #10 cans... I have about 200 pouches of freeze-dried tuck away in plastic buckets in a very good temperature controlled location. My buckets are simple heavy-grade plastic, actually, they use to hold 35 lbs of cat litter, so they're strong, stack well and got a good lid. I figure it was a good secondary use for them... But, I recently found a really good deal locally on Food Grade buckets and I was wondering...

Question: Is there any reason that these buckets need to be food grade? Any reason I should change them?

Note: Yes, I know I could probably find answers on the internet but I would rather hear and take advice from the folks on the forum that I have learned to trust rather than some yahoo out in the ether.

 

If you are storing loose grains, sugar, honey, or other foodstuffs where the food would come into direct contact with the bucket you should not use bucket that are not rated "food grade". You should make sure any bucket not known to be food grade be marked accordingly. Prepackaged sealed containers (air and water tight) in a not food grade bucket should be no problem what so ever.

 

Yep....I'd agree with the above.

Temperature is much more of factor, try for the lowest consistent temp you can get.

 

I was looking into one of those freeze drying units a while back . Have you got a recommendation on a good inexpensive but dependable quality unit ?

 

Hey Bandit99, do you, or can you dig a cellar? Up in your A.O. you should be able to get consistent 40 deg temps below ground. and it shouldn't freeze on ya if you can close it off to the outside! Even better if you can dig it under your home ( like we did) so you can access it during the heat of summer or cold of winter and not have to worry. A bonus is the free A/C if you run a circulation fan down there and it also helps keep things from getting stail or moldy, or stinky! Should extend your preps by quite some time, and make a refuge for you in case bad comes knocking! Other then that, what has already been posted is golden!