tightly seal kitty litter buckets?

ClareBroommaker's picture

In early summer I was given some plastic kitty litter buckets like this. They've been in the sun to dissipate the strong perfume smell added to the kitty litter. Now I'd like to be able to use these for dry food storage as they seem strong and stackable. However, the lids don't seem to seal tightly.

If you are familiar with these, do you have a way to seal them?

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Sweet Tatorman's picture

I have one of those buckets out in my garden. Same brand, same design. I use it to store disposable plastic grocery bags. I periodically empty rainwater that manages to get inside. After you posted your query I went out and took a critical look at it. Emptied 3 inches of water. That plastic hinge on the lid is well designed for it's intended function with requires only 5 or so cycles before all of the product has been used. More cycles and exposure to sunlight and the hinge splits. It completely separated from the stationary portion of the lid while I was examining it today. I don't think these could be made air tight. I think it may be possible to seal it enough to exclude insect intrusion. To do this you could apply thin self adhesive foam weather striping to the ~1/4" channel in the underside of the moveable portion of the lid. Edit: This morning I checked the recycling code on mine and it shows it to be polypropylene. Unfortunately this is classed as a low surface energy material which means that the typical pressure sensitive adhesives will not stick to it very well.

David Trammel's picture

Not sure how airtight this would be but maybe a large heavy plastic bag? Or go ahead and vacuum seal 1-2 lb bags of the bulk food, and stuff them into the litter boxes? The boxes will keep out rodents and such, and the vacuum bags will let you pull out what you need for short term use.