Sealing Mylar Bags with a Flat Iron

Mormon culture lesson #87: Mormons store food in their garages.

We do. It's weird, I know, we store 3 months of food, just like a mini-grocery store right within the walls of our home.

Need to borrow a cup of flour? Your Mormon neighbor might just hand you a 10 lb Mylar bag of flour, & simply ask you to 're-seal' upon return.

K, no not really. But I wanted to be sure you knew what to do in such a case...

And, wanted to share a discovery- you can use a flat iron (usually used for hair) to seal Mylar bags of grain for your food storage!

Keep the Mylar bags handy at your house (along with the moisture absorption pkts). Then, whenever you need to store your flour, just do it at home with your flat iron.


1. Fill your bags. If you're using flour, wipe along the mouth of the bag to insure a clean seal.


2. Put your flat iron temp at the hottest level. Seal the bag 3/4 of the way.


3. See the opening I left? Just big enough to slip in a moisture absorption pkt. You can seal w/o the moisture absorption pkt, but with the packet, your grain will stay fresh for over 10 years!! Btw, you can fill the bag as full as you'd like, no limits, so long as you can successfully seal the bag. I did over 10 lbs of flour per Mylar bag.


3. Squeeze the air out from the top. Be gentle when doing flour, it will plummet out the top if you're not careful. Yes, this is my ayi holding the bag. With two of us we did about 9 bags in 30 minutes, including the time to show her what this was all about, and why we store food in our garage when the grocery store is visible from our compound entrance.


4. Then your bag will be fairly round (like you have a volleyball inside, see pic #3). Simply lay it flat on the table and use the length of your fore arm and smooth it out flat. This will make it store nicely in your plastic bins in the garage.

NOTE: Lesson learned... yes, bugs and rodents can chew through Mylar. So you must store them in plastic bins (as suggested on the Mylar bag websites). Also, I've learned to put a few bay leaves in each bin that stores food... then the bugs don't even get tempted. Replace bay leaves when the fragrance starts to die.