As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently created an extensive First Aid Kit. Then I was in a quandary trying to figure out just where to put this large tackle box and it still be readily accessible. This prompted me to do a little organizing before my vacation ended and I headed back to work after the New Year. I found a few items that were not used, old, expired, etc that I just threw out. This cleared up a little room in various areas under the sink and in medicine cabinets, but still I needed more room for this large First Aid Kit. My only other viable alternative was to put it in our spare closet that we recently revamped into a pantry.

Our new pantry is filling up quickly and has become a pantry/DP closet. Many of the items like canned and boxed food I really couldn’t do much with as they are already pretty tidy. However, there was this one area of the shelf that constantly irritated me…..the batteries!  I had originally stacked them the best I could, but some of the packaging is not in simple square easily stackable boxes. I have attempted to buy batteries in semi-bulk sizes so they are not so expensive per battery.  But sometimes we just don’t have the extra money to buy the bulk or I could not find the sizes I needed (AAA and D) in bulk sizes for long lasting shelf life. So, we had several packages of batteries in that normal every day battery packing. You know the kind you see them hanging in on the aisle near a register in a store? They just don’t stack well.

During this same time frame I came across this pin on pinterest on battery storage.

I really liked this idea. This is one of the smaller tackle boxes that can be bought to compartmentalize a large tackle box or can be used alone for the “not so serious” fisherman. I am starting to really dig tackle boxes. But I just spent over a hundred bucks on the first aid kit and I really just couldn’t bring myself to spend any more money no matter how much I liked this idea.

Then I found an empty Pet ice cream bucket in the pantry that I thought I could use. I like to keep a few of the plastic ice cream buckets with lids as they can come in handy. They are usually round, but I had recently bought some Pet brand that was chocolate chip that I just had to have that came in a rectangular bucket. The rectangular bucket will fit easier in the freezer unless you have a round freezer.

So, I thought I would try using this to organize the cantankerous batteries that keep jumping off the shelf at me.

For the batteries that we had that were in boxes I just removed the lids and those extra tabs from the top that take up extra space. Then I removed all the AAA and D batteries from their individual packaging. I confirmed that all of the batteries have the dates on the individual batteries so I was not concerned about the packaging.

Then I just put them in the unused ice cream bucket.

It isn’t fancy, but it keeps our batteries in line. It also made me realize that we needed to restock some of the batteries like the AAA and D.  All of the packaging up on the shelf was an allusion that we had more batteries that we actually do. As you can see, I simply squeezed the 8 remaining AAA batteries in the box with the AAs. There is still quite a bit of room to grow and fill up the bucket and yet it takes up less space on the shelf than all of the packages that would not stay stacked.

And now I have carved out just enough space for the new first aid kit.