Gamma Seal Lids

The Modern Survival Blog has a good article on using the Gamma Seal Lids and using them with your food storage. If you are familiar with these lids, they are a screw down lid that is intended to be used with the standard 5-gallon* food storage buckets in lieu of the standard lid (which are notoriously difficult to remove). What you get with a Gamma Seal Lid is an adapter that fits over the lip of the bucket and then the lid which screws down into the adapter and seals the bucket. 

    The advantage to such lids, as discussed in the MSB article, is that they provide easy access to the contents of a bucket if you will be opening and closing the bucket. For instance, my wife and I keep a bucket with a Gamma Seal Lid for the rice, flour, sugar, pancake mix, and a couple other items that we access fairly often for cooking. We can then refill that bucket with new product or from our long term storage when it runs low. Provided you don't overtighten the lids, they are easy to unscrew and maintain most of the width of the bucket so you have plenty of room for a measuring cup, scoop, or bowl.

    While you could use these lids for all your long term storage, the expense makes that impractical: it looks like Amazon is selling them about $13 per lid. You can buy an aluminum pail opener (for taking off the standard food bucket lid) for about half of that and a standard plastic opener for like $4 bucks. 

    Anyway, the MSB article has a lot more information and tips including installation, maintenance and lubrication of the seal, and other uses so read the whole thing.