Hello there,

While I've been straddling a vegetarian/vegan fence for years, over the past several months I've increasingly become appreciative of a RAW diet. My family is a mix of SAD and will-accept-vegetarian eaters so my kitchen/pantry has to be multifunctional. BTW, our home is small, and my kitchen is tiny with limited counter space requiring constant get-out/use/wash/put-away appliance use (mixer, blender, food processor, etc.).

Of course (as it's where I've come from) the kitchen is geared to a SAD diet. And clearly salads can be universally served in my family as can fresh fruit; but as I'm tending more and more toward eating RAW, I need a larger quantity of vegetables and fruits on hand. I can't make daily trips to the market.

So my question that I hope you will help with is: how do you store your vegetables and fruits so they can breathe, don't bruise one another or by their gasses (ie, apples) affect other produce? Have you found bins of some kind? or some form of slings or ???????? Like, on one of the 3 counters I have in the kitchen, my largest (about 3' long by 1/1-2' deep), there are 4 onions, 3 zucchinis, 4 lemons, a bunch of bananas on a plastic banana hanger, and 2 peppers. I won't even get into how stuffed my little 'frig is!

Help! What do you do? How do you organize the produce in your home to maximize storage and freshness? BELIEVE me, I really do appreciate any help or suggestions that can get this all organized!

With all best wishes and thanks again!

Gee

making sprouts is an excellent way to have fresh baby greens around all the time and you can always have some on the go at various stages so you never run out. the seeds store well in a glass sealer jar on any shelf and sprouting by jar method takes up very little room. that's very space economical.

with my dear papa having moved in recently (very different diets, i must say!) i'm thinking about a small mini fridge, not the bar kind but the sort that reaches waist high. we have a chest of drawers in the kitchen for storage now that i can see switching over for a fridge like that. at worst i'll swap out the broken dishwasher and jam it under the counter there. it would serve very well for the big bags of fruit and veg i use for juicing, buying bigger is more economical but having it all go off due to no room in cold storage certainly is not!

for a time i replaced some chairs 'round the table with a bench that has storage under the seat, that freed up lots of cupboard space as i kept the lesser used utensils and extra stuff in it. i got it at the thrift store for a song too! it's on the porch now with summer squirty toys and the like in it right now, hats and mitts in winter. i might bring it back in if things get too crowded in here again.

some dedicated raw foodies use their stove top or replace the stove entirely but that won't work for you. how about the top of the fridge? is it jammed up already? i keep anything that needs to ripen there, bananas on a hanging thing, basket of avos and pear, pineapple... keeps the fruit flies out of my way too .
fruit makes a pretty display, if you are eating it at a quick rate can it go center of the table? how about center of the coffee table while you're at it? makes for a quick snack grab when you're on the way out the door too.

one last suggestion is to go through all the gadgets in the kitchen and do away with those that you really don't use, that you can use something else for, that you have doubles of etc. i know it's hard to do because there is always this feeling of "maybe someday that will come in handy." but if you hardly ever or even never use it it's just not paying it's share of the kitchen rent IMHO. out the door it goes!

best of luck to you.

Very useful question, Gee. very useful response, coco. My contribution is this: I am thinking of buying a set of steel mesh colanders(the ones with feet) to use as fruit bowls, because my fruit bowls aren't sufficiently well-ventilated to retard spoilage.

oh, one last thing i use in the kitchen, that may suit you as well Tamukha (lovely screen name, btw), is a set of hanging mesh baskets. i see those in the thrift store regularly as well. there is a tiny version that i find not very useful but the ones i've got are quite large and i've added more chain and another basket too so i have 4 instead of the regular three. fruit tends to get bruised by the metal mesh so i put small saucers into the bottoms of all the baskets. they still get lots of air flow and the plates underneath keep them in better shape.

coco,

Thanks for the compliment re: my screen name. I like yours too : ) I love the hanging wire baskets idea but cringe at the thought of drilling holes in my kitchen ceiling. If only there were some way to do it that wouldn't mar the plaster . . .

It was a constant battle in my home for a while. My veggies falling out every time I opened the door, no place for my husbands beer! My son came home from university and brought his small fridge. It is now the beer fridge in our back porch. Problem solved. (although I still don't seem to have enough room!)

i found a nice sturdy coat and hat stand you know like a coat tree? its about 6 feet tall and wood .. i screwed in some hooks all down the trunk of it and i hang fruit in lingerie bags off that it seems to work pretty well as long as you keep the heavier bags towards the bottom like a sack of oranges or something and you have your own indoor fruit tree *snicker*

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

shoot, that's awesome Jodi!

I use clean terry cloth bath and hand towels to store ripening fruit on. The logic behind this is that the terry cloth towels are thick enough to cusion the fruit so that they don't bruise and you can wash them between shopping trips so that there isn't a build-up of fungi/bacteria from spoiling fruit to contaminate the next batch of fruit (although I must admit that I don't wash them EVERY shopping trip).

I put the bath towels on the top of the fridge (that's where I put the bananas so that the kids don't eat them before they get truely ripe) and the hand towels on the counters in areas that I don't use a lot.

That IS a cool idea Jodi, it sounds like a big space saver!

Hey Jodi

you say u use a lingerie bag
i have lingerie but i am not sure what a lingerie bag is
i didn't know that there were such things
but whatever they are, sounds like a cool tree thing going on
very imaginative as well

as for the student1 person
hmmmmm.... if you have a backyard, you could also put it outside too
esp. if you have unripe fruit, like say... you have a green mango or green bananas
if you put them outside, they can ripen

then you can make one of those lingerie trees like Jodi
does

such cool imaginative people here

geeeeeezzz

LaV they are mesh bags of various sizes they usually have a zipper at the top or a draw string . i like the draw strings so i can hang them they look similar to this [www.campstore.com]
if you are good at sewing you could find mesh or lace tablecloths at a thrift store and make them quite easily

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

Hello again!

THANK you all SO much for your wonderful suggestions ~ I can't tell you how much I appreciate your help and taking me seriously (versus thinking me / my question too dumb to consider). I do love my home: it's perfectly located with a beautiful view, close to work & school & grocery; but it really is a tiny old house. We don't have "TMS" (too much stuff) because there is no room for it. ;-)

When I went to Meijer's (a local grocery / general store chain) this past week-end, I studiously shopped their Housewares area and found (for approx. $15) a 4-shelf 17" wide by 9" deep by 4' tall cart. The shelves are wire racks with approx 1-1/2" "tall" edges so things don't roll off. This cart is small enough that while still in the way, I can easily push it to a less trafficed part of the kitchen. I love the idea of using towels to soften the resting spot for fruits and vegetables as those ribbed, plastic-covered wire shelves are a little hard on things I'm finding. A significant potential drawback is that this cart is not something to have around young children because it is not at all strong and would not survive a child trying to climb on it, and it would topple over if pulled on. But our children are in HS and college so that's not a problem for us.

Well, again ~ THANK you all so much for being so kind and helpful to me! I really appreciate it very much!

All best wishes,

Gee

what great tips from everyone! i love the fruit tree idea lol.

one thing I thought about though, re putting produce near/on the fridge - do you not worry about EMFs (electro magnetic frequencies) from the fridge? I try to keep stuff away from electrical devices - well, as much as i can manage, i know electricity is everywhere nowadays.. :-/

Havnig a a cordless phone anywhere in the house is apparently much more health damaging than holding a cell phone right up against your head. The only way to escape from EMF and the like is, well, there is no way. it's everywhere.

no questions are too dumb to consider if they come from a valid place of being purely genuine

...Jodi, the banana eating buddhist

good point coco. we got rid of our cordless phones and went back to regular ones. I'd like to get rid of the wifi too but bf has put his foot down bout that, lol

I don't think it matters lisa. your neighbours all have things, your house is wired, there are tv signals and cell phone towers and satelite whatevers flying through the air. getting rid of your appliances won't make a bit of difference.

you're right coco. it sucks although I think there is a difference between being really near/on top of an electrical device and the general electrical smog that hangs around us.. would imagine the emfs are a lot higher. when I've checked with my meter it's generally really high within a few feet of stuff (eg washing machine, boiler etc) then goes right down once you move away a little.

Hmm. I consider the whole house an electrical device. It's all wired. There is nothing close to our bed though, except a salt lamp