Storing & Rotating Water

For years I've wanted to get in the habit of storing extra water in case of a natural disaster or the occasional 'boil water' notices our community issues when the water supply has been contaminated for some reason. In years past when I kept gallons of water on hand, I never had a good system to make sure I was using up the oldest water first. But I finally came up with an easy method now that tells me at first glance the order in which I should use the gallons of water we keep on hand. And I don't have to lift and shift them around at all.

My father built shelves for storing the 24 gallons of water over our chest freezer in the garage, which is handy to load and unload right by my vehicle. If you notice, some of the jug handles are facing different directions.

The handles that are facing to the right, or farthest from my reach, are the newest jugs of water I've set on the shelves. We use about six or seven gallons a week for cooking and making tea, so when I go to the grocery store once a week, I only have to handle and fill up six gallons of water. We can get gallon refills from HEB for 20 cents a gallon. 

The handles that are facing forward are the next newest gallons of water. Every time I bring a new batch of water from the store, I turn the existing jug handles to the center or left, which is easy and quick to do.

The handles that are facing to the left are the oldest jugs of water, which I use before the others. It's a simple system and doesn't involve constantly moving the jugs to keep them in order from the oldest to the newest water. Voila!