The cardinal rule of food storage is store what you eat and eat what you store. In my home we eat can food, and we go to the local ALDI and buy our can food by the flat. Now we do mark the month and year on the top of each can with a sharpie, but it seems like we always end up with the newest flat of cans on top of the older cans. It also is hard to see exactly what is it the cans. I have been searching for a solution, and have found a few options online.
Some are DIY cardboard organizers that you cut and glue from old boxes, others are large plywood and metal track affairs, you can even buy commercial options from small versions for thirty dollars to large scale rolling shelves for a few hundred.
This Option is Both Good and Inexpensive
A simple internet search of “can food rotator” will lead you to all of them. I found a good compromise in cost, ease, and size. I bought 7 sets of cardboard can food organizers from www.canorganizer.com to organize my kitchen and pantry. These sets contain 4 sheets of die cut cardboard, and each sheet folds into one rotator box. They are strong enough to stack (I tested them by stacking full organizers 4 across and 4 high on my dryer).
The can food organizers come in two sizes, Cupboard (which is shorter and holds 9 soup cans) or Pantry (which is deeper and holds 18 soups cans)
Cupboard costs 11.96 for a four pack, Pantry costs 15.96 for a 4 pack.
They are strong enough to carry full of cans. Additionally, I moved them around a lot while trying to decide how I wanted to use them. For added strength you could wrap a loop of tape around them.
My only complaint is a minor one, the instruction video moves a little fast and they don’t come with any additional documentation, so the first organizer I made took me a couple minutes of backing up and replaying specific parts of the video translate it to the actually cardboard sheet. That’s a minor complaint, because after the first one, folding the next one is really easy. I really like the can organizers, as they are a good balance of cost and effectiveness. They do exactly what they are advertised as doing.
Here is a Update after Four Years and a Move