Food Storage

The overarching theme that I  hope is coming through in these posts is that you should not panic or feel rushed, but all of your preparations should be done in an orderly manner. This becomes especially important with food storage.

It's not that you can't acquire food storage quickly. For example, you can order an MRE food supply for one year, and be done at once. The last time I checked, that was about $5000 per person, and that's been a while. There is another company that makes packets that they load into buckets, and for four people for a year it was about $7000. That is an option.

There are some problems with this approach. First of all, it's rather expensive. Also, this food is not particularly good. However, if you have the available funds, and ordering this way would give you peace of mind, that's worth something.

It is worth remembering that the Church is now encouraging three months rather than one year, though they do point out that more is better. I believe that was to take away some of the stress. One year seems so insurmountable, that reducing that to just a quarter should feel much less stressful.

Also, think of it as a starting point, like having a 72 hour kit gets you started on food and water. Get in two weeks, than one month, then three months, and then with luck you have learned to accumulate and rotate, and things start seeming more possible. Most likely, a year will not seem possible until you have started.

Our method is shopping the sales. Actually, one huge advantage of having storage is that we don't usually run out of things before they are on sale. Some of that takes paying attention, and organization helps. My sisters recently completely reorganized the back storage, and I found that we were doing far better on certain soups than I realized. This is partly because we don't use them as much as we used to. There are some things that I used to cook a lot that I don't make as often. That's okay. You should expect the process to involve adjustments.

Some of those adjustments become great opportunities to examine your eating habits and improve them. I buy less mixes now, and cook more from scratch. That's healthier. We still use a lot of canned vegetables. That is not ideal, but they store well and it works for us, so that is something we are doing now. You need to start with where you are.

I remember having a conversation with one coworker where she was frustrated by trying to cook healthy and save money, and I said that I tried to arrange our weekly menus based on the sales. She had not thought of that. That can be one starting point. Look at the ads, figure out what you need for that week, and get a little bit extra of whatever is on sale. Even if you can only allocate $5 per week, on the right week that can add to your supply of flour or cooking oil or rice, and then you do not have to buy it at full price when you actually run out.

I know some people who have needed their 72 hour kits at different times, or water storage, but I know a lot of people who have relied on food storage, because of employment issues or weather issues. More to the point, you can use it anyway, even if there is nothing keeping you from going to the store and buying more. You can always use food.