I am by no means any kind of expert in long-term food storage as I have only been working on it for just over a year. A great resource for me has been
www.foodstoragemadeeasy.net
When we started collecting buckets we nabbed about 12
free buckets (that used to hold muffin mix) from our local Co-op grocery store bakery. They are about half the size of a 6 gallon bucket (see photo below), although I have never measured the actual volume in gallons, and hold 10-11kg/~25lbs of rice or wheat. We also have 3 square 4 gallon buckets from Tim Horton's that used to hold fondant, but the lids on these aren't very tight--they open and close quite easily--so we only use them for short term storage or items that are individually packaged like pasta.
The muffin mix buckets do not take the standard Gamma lids like the standard 5 and 6 gallon buckets do, and we use a rubber mallet to close them and a gentle easing-around-the-bucket method of getting the lids off (these lids are more flexible and it is not nearly as difficult to remove these lids as the standard 5 or 6 gallon bucket lids).
muffin mix bucket
8 kg bag of jasmine rice in muffin mix bucket
(stored in original bag folded over inside the bucket because we go into this bucket on a regular basis)
side-by-side comparison of muffin mix bucket and 6 gallon standard bucket
The standard 6 gallon buckets hold almost a full 22.5 kg/50 lb bag of wheat or rice, a little less with a Gamma seal lid because the lid needs room to spin. I get my 6 gallon buckets and Gamma seal lids (and organic grains, rice, beans, oats) from local preparedness stores
www.incaseof.ca and
www.bridensolutions.ca
