Review: Shelf Reliance Cansolidator

This post was supposed to be part of my Food Storage Friday series yesterday, but I need multiplied. LOL Pretend I didn't miss it. ;)

You may recall last June, I did a review of Shelf Reliance's food storage products. I was able to review the Raspberry Cake Bars Gift Basket, and in it was several of their freeze dried goods. I really recommend their food products for emergency preparedness and food storage. (It's so EASY to reconstitute dried eggs and have them when you run out of fresh!)

I've been coveting their Harvest for ages - I've posted about it on here before. We've been see-sawing back and forth on it since last June! It's really not the cost, it's really a space issue right now - it's a matter of playing if we move this here, will that fit there? lol Eventually I'll figure out a safe place to put it! The other day at Costco, I was so excited to see their Cansolidator Pantry, I snatched it right up.


The Cansolidator Pantry holds 40 cans. The nifty part is that you can place it on the shelf vertical or horizontal. If you have a super long shelf, you can also attach several side by side. It's fairly simple to put together - I did it myself while DH was at work last week, and it took me around 5 minutes, if that. You create the slots the size YOU want them - so if you have bigger soup cans, you can make it fit those, and even thinner for tuna fish or canned chicken cans.

Here's the pieces, there's the tracks that are those long thin pieces:


and then the "sides" which fit into the tracks:


Here it is put together:


It does seem to take up a lot of room on the shelf:


I'm not going to say I can really put more on the shelf using it - but it is WAY easier to rotate the cans than with just using the flats from the store like I do on my lower shelves. I don't have to lift flats to get to another kind of food underneath it. (which is really annoying!) I'm actually thinking of moving the Cansolidator onto the kitchen counter, so it's super easy to grab my most used cans every day. I thought this might be easier, especially when we do figure out where to stash the Harvest. It is a pretty sturdy plastic, but make sure you fill it after you've placed it on the shelf where you want it. Don't try moving it full.

So if you are looking for an easier way to store your canned goods and be positive you are doing the First In, First Out (FIFO) system of rotating, you might want to give the Cansolidator a try. At my local Costco, it was just $22.99 plus tax. Now if you have a lot more cans, you may want to check out some of their other systems - the Harvest holds up 600 cans, depending on the size (it's their largest one), but they have plenty of different options in between, such as the Reserve.

By the way, this is an awesome way to rotate pet food cans, especially if you have more than one pet. If I did more canned pet food, I'd totally get another one just for that! (I wish I had this years ago, I used to use a baby food jar stand to hold all the cans of Fancy Feast we'd go through, lol)

I purchased this out of my own money, and this is just my opinion.