Gamma lids are specialized lids intended to be used with 5 and 6 gallon buckets. They are heavy-duty, food-safe lids with a sealing-gasket which is both air and water-tight. They come in several colors, including black, white, red, yellow, orange and blue. They do tend to be expensive. The best price I've ever found was $4.99 at Wal-Mart. They can also be ordered online for around $6.50 to $8 (Amazon).The great part about these lids is that you spin them open, instead of having to pry open your bucket lid every time you use the contents. My kids can open these gamma lids easily. Unfortunately, even my three-year old can open them easily, which leads to many "cooking" messes at our house.
I have a gamma lid of every color and a color-coding system to indicate their contents. I keep four buckets with gamma lids on the floor of my pantry. White contains rice; blue is bread flour; black holds my sugar; and red contains wheat. When my pantry buckets are running low, I transfer the food stored in my longer-term storage buckets into my pantry-buckets that have the gamma lids (you can also remove the gamma lid and place it on the new bucket).
I also keep two buckets with gamma lids in my longer-term home storage. The bucket with the orange lid is full of two-pound packages of brown sugar (which keeps them more fresh than if I just left stored them out on the shelf). The bucket with the yellow lid is full of smaller packages of powdered sugar.
These are just the ways that I personally utilize these great lids. Some families replace all of their longer-term storage bucket lids with gamma lids (which would be too expensive for me). I'm planning to store my charcoal in plastic buckets with gamma lids. Gamma lids would also be great for storing pet food, fertilizer, or anything else that you want to keep dry and easily accessible.
Gamma lids are not necessary for a three-month supply or even a longer-term supply. But if you utilize buckets for either, they can be a great tool!
How do you use gamma lids?
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4 comments:
So do you have a complete bucket full of each: brown and powdered sugars? I was always afriad to buy more then a couple of bags at a time because it would go bad? Does your stay moist? How do you rotate it?
I do keep a full bucket of both brown and powdered sugar. I know that you can buy either type of sugar in large bulk bags, but I like having them in the smaller pastic bags.
I'm pretty good at rotating new brown/powdered sugar bags into the bottom of the bucket. It just takes a little rearranging once or twice a year when I stock up. I probably rotate through all of the brown sugar in just one year. It takes more like two or three years to completely rotate through the bucket of powdered sugar.
So far, I haven't found any hard bags of brown sugar in my bucket (although they weren't quite as moist as they were at purchase time). In contrast, the bags of brown sugar that I left sitting on the shelf did get hard. So, I think that the bucket protects the brown sugar from hardening to some degree. The powdered sugar has been just fine. [I do live in a very dry climate.]
The LDS church does not recommend storing brown sugar long-term. However, I completely refresh my stock every year or two, so it isn't a concern for me.
I love gamma lids, they make life so much easier! Recently, I wanted to take one off a bucket an couldn't figure out how! Have you taken one off a bucket before? Any ideas?? Thanks!
Kathy -
I confess that I've never removed a gamma lid from a bucket. I've personally been worried about destroying the gasket in the process. I suspect that it would be easier with the lid removed.
Does anyone else have some experience with removing a gamma lid?
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