What to do with all those bulk items?

I wondered this very thing when I was wandering down the huge isles at the bulk store. Where would I put all those tomatoes? How in the world was I going to find room for that huge container of ziploc bags? After all we live in military housing and the room available for storage is very limited especially in the kitchen. At the time I told myself well it is to good of a deal to pass on I will figure it out when I get home. Yeah, that can of 100oz of tomatoes doesn't get any smaller once you get it home! Now we use a lot of tomatoes but there was no way I could use this much tomato product in the 5 days it would take it to go bad once opened. My solution? To freeze it of course....but how?

I needed an option that wasn't going to use all my Tupperware and that wasn't going to take up my whole freezer. Plus I had all those Ziploc bags just sitting there....OK you know where I am going with this. I put one cup of tomato's in a sandwich bag and then layer the sandwich bags into a freezer bag lay flat in the freezer for 24hours till set and then "file" them standing up in the back of my freezer. Takes up very little space, the sandwich bags were really cheap and I can reuse the more expensive freezer bag as many times as I need to.

All well and good but what about all of those Ziploc bags, the 25lbs of flour, the huge container of animal crackers....the list goes on and on. There really wasn't any room in my pantry for all of these items but I needed them close to the kitchen for the ease of cooking or refilling containers. My solution was to buy a freestanding garage shelving unit and install it in my laundry room in an unused nook that was intended for a free standing freezer....Great vertical usage of space and since it is free standing I can take it with us every time we move with little drama.