When to throw out flooded pantry goods

The pantry took a brown line. That is not a discount aisle. Street water in this city has sewage, fuel, and whatever the ditch was holding.

Screw-top jars, cardboard, and plastic bags are done. You will want to save the expensive olive oil. The lid sat in the bayou. Let it go.

Photograph the shelves before you haul. Then haul.

Do this now

Photograph the water line on the pantry and the labels you can still read.
Throw anything with a paper, cardboard, or foam package that got wet.
Throw jars and bottles with screw caps or pull tops that sat in the water.
Keep only undamaged sealed cans that you can sanitize after you confirm there is no boil-water confusion about how to wash them.

The can exception, and it is narrow

Commercial cans that stayed sealed, are not bulging, not rusted through, and not dented at the seam can sometimes be kept if you remove the label, wash them, and if needed sanitize the way public-health guidance describes. If a boil-water notice is on, use potable water for that wash. If you cannot do it cleanly, the can is not worth a GI tract. Home-canned jars are a no after floodwater.

What is always trash

Flour, sugar, spices, snacks, bread, anything in a box or a bag. Baby food jars that sat in the water. Medicine and vitamins. Open containers. Produce that floated. Wooden utensils and cheap plastic that you cannot really wash. Houston heat will sour a “maybe” shelf overnight. Do not donate this pile. Trash it.

The emotional part

People cry over a spice drawer. That is allowed. Take the photo for the claim, name the items on video, and move. A renters or homeowners contents list with “pantry, estimated $X, flooded” plus pictures is how you get something back. Standing in the silt eating a wet cracker is how you get sick. If the kitchen is also a sewage kitchen, nothing porous in that room is a keepsake.

Verify live. Status changes hourly. Public-health can-sanitizing steps are on CDC and food-safety pages. Follow those, plus your current boil-water notice, before you keep any can.