jars opening in fridge

Hi Maralyn,
Your solution sounds like a good one. We are not vanners but tow a small trailer and often go on pretty rough roads and tracks. We have had a few memorable experiences where containers that we though were carefully closed up have come undone. Any vibration in a towed rig will cause screw topped conatiners - in fact many containers - to come undone. Anything behind the axle will suffer the most as that bounces up and down much more than you realise sitting up front in the vehicle.
Solution? Do what you can to reduce bounce in your van, including reducing both speed and tyre pressure where necessary. Store containers in the van so that they are in front of the axle. If that is not possible, do what you have done and give things an extra level of containment.
Cheers,
Val.

Hi Maralyn,

I put jars of opened products into beer coolers both in the pantry cupboards, and also in the fridge, depending on whether the need to be kept refrigerated or not. I also pack cans of beer on their sides inside the coolers into our fridge shelf as that way they seem to travel and fit well and don't leave rub marks.
The coolers don't weigh much and also don't move so lids stay intact.

I have also used small stackable plastic containers which I decant the products into for travel, and for dry goods which are opened such as nuts, grains, legumes etc find the snap lock storage bags great.

Hope this helps you. Unfortunately it's always foods such as beetroot or honey which seem to spill when we have had any accidents.

regards,

Heather

Hi Maralyn

While a strip of adhesive tape such duct tape will hold them, contents of jars can be decanted into square plastic containers with press on or clip on lids. Square containers packed well can't rotate and better still, you are saving on the weight of glass jars. Anything that can spill is stored in my fridge in oblong icecream containers (lidless) from commercial quantities used at a café.

And its not only in the fridge, its the cutlery ,bowls & plates, sauces, spices. We do some fairly rough 4wding towing the camper and we've encountered some 10 pointer messes, we now put our breakable glass (sauces etc) in homebrew tins sponge on the bottom and wrapped in "chux", melamine plates/bowls separated with paper towel (you don't loose the pattern then) wine glasses in whiskey bottle tubes wrapped in chux, tea towels packed on top of the cutlery, spices in toilet roll tubes,make sure to wrap the lids so they are tight in the tube because they can eject up breaking the lids and make your camper smell like an Asian Restaurant. cheers

If you must use jars and screw top lids, I found that wrapping a turn or two of masking tape around the jars and lids keeps them closed. Masking tape is easy to take off when you need to get into the contents. I use a new wrap of the tape each time I need to pack up for another day on the road.

Hope this helps

Disco.

Wrap each container in gladwrap - even if it has not been opened.
Wrap containers which are open but not empty in gladwrap also.
Wrap a few turns one way, then do a 90° twist of the object & keep wrapping in a new direction.
Gladwrap is cheap compared to losing contents. Don't be stingy with it.

Keep bottles & containers in PVC tubes of different diameters cut to measure for height and stacked in a container which has them all in a firm to tight fit. The aim is prevent rubbing of containers against each other (possibly destroying labels /rubbing through container walls of soft pack items etc) and to limit mess should a lid come off.

Cheers

Well we must be the exeception to the norm here because in all the years and rough roads that we have traveled in our dual axle Avan with most of the storage behind the axles this has not happened to us, incredible, lucky , whatever..and I will cross my fingers(and anything else)and hope that it does not happen in the future..cheers