It never rains but it pours

[pozorvlak]

We try to buy dry goods (rice, porridge, lentils, couscous...) in bulk, which is great for reducing cost and trips to the shops, but more of a hassle once you get the stuff home - the packaging is usually hard or impossible to re-seal, vulnerable to rodents, and a pain to pour from. For a while now, we've been using a system taught to us by dynix (and taught to her by her mum): keep a few empty 4pt plastic milk bottles around, and decant your freshly-bought bag of lentils into bottles when you open it.

This system works brilliantly. The bottles are ergonomic, the right weight, easy to pour from, airtight, translucent (so you can see at a glance how full they are) and fairly tough. We maintain a working set of all our most common ingredients within easy reach, and stack our reserves along the top of the kitchen cupboards for when the working set needs replenishment. Our flat is no longer plagued by lentils bouncing everywhere and getting stuck in the most unlikely crevices. There was still one problem, though: the decanting stage. Milk bottle necks are a lovely width to pour from, but not such a good width to pour into. We tried a few funnels, but (being narrower than the bottle-neck) they tended to get blocked, leading to overspill and lentils getting everywhere (and I do mean everywhere).

Until wormwood_pearl came up with the most brilliant MacGuyver hack I've ever seen.



[Yes, our blender is held together with duct tape and Araldite. It still works.]

In case the picture isn't completely clear, it's a funnel made from the top of a milk bottle, screwed directly on to the bottle being filled using two bottle-tops taped back-to-back. The target's wide enough that it's hard to miss, even with a 10kg sack of rice; the neck's wide enough that it doesn't block easily; and the screw-thread means that the funnel's very unlikely to get knocked out.

Here's how to make your own:

You Will Need
1x 4pt plastic milk bottle
2x milk bottle tops
sharp knife
sticky tape
(optional) glue

Instructions

1. Glue the two bottle tops back-to-back. This stage is not essential, but helps to ensure that the edges of the cuts line up.
2. When dry, cut out a big hole in the middle. You don't want to go right to the edge, lest lentils try to escape, but you do want the hole to be nice and wide so things don't get stuck.
3. For added security, tape around the side walls of the tops.
4. Cut the top 6" (15cm) or so off the bottle. You want the full width of the bottle for your funnel, and you want it to be deep enough that you have warning of a blockage in time to stop pouring, but you want it to be shallow enough that you can easily poke through to the neck to dislodge stuck things.
5. Recycle the bottom of the bottle.
6. Screw the two tops onto the funnel.

Close-up of the funnel:


Close-up of the connector:


Edit 11/02/2013: If you have access to a 3D printer, you can now print a one-piece connector, which should be more solid than the duct-tape ones. Download the STL file from Thingiverse, or get the SCAD code from GitHub.

Comments

[susannahf.livejournal.com]

That's such a good idea!

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Isn't it? :-)

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Brilliant!

[r-e-mercia.livejournal.com]

Genius! Though you should decorate the funnel with cut-out shapes and some sticky-back plastic for that genuine Blue Peter feel :-)

I shall be making one of these! I bought a bunch of jar type things in a fit of enthusiasm when I last went to the wholesaler, but I have more lentil/rice varieties than jars and the milk cartons idea itself is an extremely good one.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

They're nice and quick to make - I couldn't find our existing one this morning, so knocked up the one shown in about five minutes.

Cut-out shapes: yes, that idea has promise. Though I rather like the brutalist aesthetic of the existing implementation ;-)

[r-e-mercia.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, it's very evocative of the social constructs as subtly nuanced before the viewer in the use of staple foods.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

And it nicely counterpoints the surrealism of the underlying metaphor.

[cangetmad.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Re-using milk cartons needs to be done more: such an excellent piece of design; such a pervasive piece of disposable plastic.

[wholepint.livejournal.com]

I love this idea, but sadly we don't drink enough milk in our house to buy it in 2l quantities - we get through about a pint a week and that's only down to my tea addiction and our joint love of mashed potato.

Still a good idea, though.

[wormwood-pearl.livejournal.com]

Start eating cereal for breakfast :D

[wholepint.livejournal.com]

I'm a toasted bread products morning kind of girl and the boyfriend doesn't (SHOCK) eat breakfast until he gets to work.

And where would all the bulk bought cereal go before we finished the first two cartons of milk...?

: O

[wormwood-pearl.livejournal.com]

MY MIND IS LOCKED IN AN INFINITE FEEDBACK LOOP OF IMPOSSIBILTY

[wholepint.livejournal.com]

Mmm, recursive :)

[susannahf.livejournal.com]

I thought this, and then realised that there's nothing to stop me doing this with 1 pint bottles, which is all I get through in the time it takes for the milk to go off.

[wholepint.livejournal.com]

But wouldn't a pint bottle hold less than a box of cereal/bag of rice etc? I guess there's only one way to find out...

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

1. Buy and drink four 1pt bottles of milk. Retain the empties.
2. Buy a 4pt bottle of milk.
3. Decant 4pt bottle of milk into 1pt bottles.
4. Freeze three of the 1pt bottles.
5. Clean and dry the empty 4pt bottle, and use for dry goods storage.

Frozen milk tastes absolutely fine.

[wholepint.livejournal.com]

Ah, but now we hit the problem of the fact that I don't have a freezer (annoying I know!)

good plan though.

I'm sorry, I seem to have detoured your comments into a moan about my rubbish tiny kitchen....

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Huh. OK, then, find someone who drinks more milk than you do and get them to give you their empties...

[wholepint.livejournal.com]

Good idea.

[jackalopemonger.livejournal.com]

This is a fantastic hack. I began making yogurt at home a month ago, so now I can do something with the leftover cartons (besides recycle them).

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Glad to be of assistance :-) Let me know how well it works with US milk bottles! Actually, if you could take some pictures that would be great - I was thinking of putting this up on Instructables.com.

[antoniabaker.livejournal.com]

Oh my lord, that is best domestic goddess tip since you froze hot curry ice cubes!

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Fear my domesticity :-)

[johnckirk.livejournal.com]

As others have said, that is pretty nifty :) Just one silly question though:

"We maintain a working set of all our most common ingredients within easy reach, and stack our reserves along the top of the kitchen cupboards for when the working set needs replenishment."

Are your reserves identical to the working set? If so, do you wait until the the working container is empty, then replace it with a reserve, or do you keep topping up the working container from the reserve?

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

The reserves consist of backups for the most common ingredients, plus rarer ingredients that we don't mind getting down when needed. We wait until the working bottle of (say) rice is empty before swapping it out for a full one - this minimises trips up the step-ladder and ensures that rice that's been exposed to the air is used first.