Put them on the bottom shelf.
Have the shelves secured to the wall.
Put cardboard in between all the jars. The canning jars I used to get already that that, but I often threw those away. My recent purchases don't have that anymore. She said that having cardboard between will really help reduce jar breakage when they are shaking. So I've started saving empty cereal boxes & cutting them up. 1 cereal box does 1 box of jars. It's quite easy to put these in after the jars are cool. But it's going to take me a while to get enough empty boxes to do all the jars I already have canned! I'm going to work on this though. Besides loosing the food, the clean up would be terrible! Obviously, if this is a big enough quake to destroy your home, this won't help. But smaller earthquakes, this can be a big help!
Maybe you could get some more boxes for cutting up from a restaurant or food kitchen, where they'd go through a lot of them.
ReplyDeleteTry cutting off the cuffs of old worn-out socks and using them over your jars to also help blunt any "knockage" issues. Many people use rubber bands as well.
ReplyDeleteAnother suggestion seen in earthquake preparedness materials is to have texturized rubber linings on your shelves underneath those boxes; otherwise the boxes will just slide right off the shelf and you will still have breakage. Add a "lip" to the edge of the shelves too, either with a bungee cord or a small narrow board.
That way you keep things in place on the shelf and the padding keeps them from knocking against each other too badly. Not a sure cure but should decrease breakage in all but the worst quakes.