So a friend in Germany on the other forum I referred to earlier had this little bit of experience to share. (Please forgive the spelling errors.)
I have been spending lots of time working in my pantry room. A mouse got in there and has created havoc over the past few weeks. This has given me a chance to take everything out, and I am using it as a chance to re -inventory and have made a few discoveries you might want to know about. I have a "Bulk storage area, and a pantry. The bulk area has cases, crates and buckets, and when I need something, if it is not in the pantry (a 4 x 3 meter room in the basement) then I break out a case, box or bucket of some item, and date it, and put the entire box on the shelf.
Thre was some discussion on this forum some time back regarding pull top lids vs. regular cans. I took out a supermarket case (24 cans) of canned peas and carrots from bulk storage with an expiration date of June 2017, that had some water damage evidence the outside. They were all pull top cans, and about half were rusty if the case expired in 2017, then it was probably bought at the Aldi in 2015. The case looked like I had either driven it home in the back of my truck and it started to rain, so I let it dry out, or,... who knows. Some of the cans near the most damaged looking side, we're so rusty, that I was sure that I needed to throw the case away, but wanted to look and see. None of the cans looked like the pull top was damaged, although the tops were rusty. One can rusted through, developed gas, and swole up , but the pull top didn't fail. One can looked real bad, so I turned it upside down and cut off the bottom with a can opener, and the inside looked absolutely fine, and the peas and carrots were edible. The top where the pull tab was looked fine. So my thoughts are that the pull top cans last a long time, and even on the can that burst, the pull top was fine.
Salt is dry difficult to store. I take salt containers, usually boxes, and put them in a bag, and vacuum seal them in my chamber vacuum sealer. The box crushes down, but the content appears ok. Almost all of the salt boxes, 500mgram boxes of ionized table salt, were swollen up and obviously reformed into a big clump, and the paper box showed evidence of moisture damage. Almost all of the boxes were still under vacuum. I know salt is hygroscopic and absorbs moisture, but they were sealed in plastic. I don't understand it, there should have been no way for the salt to have any moisture to absorb. But they all showed signs of moisture damage. All I can think of is that the salt had already absorbed moisture from somewhere (sitting on the store shelf), and when I vacuum packed it, I decreased the air space, and the moisture came out and turned it I to a hard rock, and damaged the paper box. I am not going to toss it out, but it will eventually require a hammer, mortar and pestle to be able to sprinkle onto my tomatoes after zombie apocalypse.
All of the "hard candy" that I vacuum packed congealed into a big hard brick, and was just a messy gooey mess. All of the hard candy that i put into glass jars, and vacuum packed the top on, was fine, only a little bit discolored. It was an experiment i did, but forgot to look at the results, and forgot. That was back in 2009 when I packed the stuff. I am going to pack a few jars, as something sweet might be a real mood changer after eating red beans and rice for 1,000 days straight.
Milk a MMMax hazelnut and milk chocolate bars do not keep, under any circumstances. Vacuum packed, frozen or taped shut in waxed butcher paper. I am going to be one grumpy old man in the apocalypse, since there will be no milk chocolate and hazelnuts. It was all bad, after 5 years.
Soap will mold. There was a box of scented commercial bar soap that had been pushed against the cement wall, and either condensation or ground water had made that wall damp, and the wall was moldy where there was no air circulation. The bar of soap was also moody, and had a weird purple color to it. It also didn't leather up, when I tried it. While this is really an insignificant observation, you might want to keep that in mind when storing bulk soap. The lye soap didn't mold up.
Mouse piss is very acidic, and causes rust on cans. Mouse turds reflect what the mouse has eaten. It appears that the mouse likes the commercial vacuum packed red cabbage and apple sauerkraut, but gets bad diahreah from it. He wont however, go into a trap with the sauerkraut, the milka chocolate bar's or peanut butter.
