Food Storage 101

I've been formulating this post in my head for a really long time and finally decided to get it out on "paper." I've mentioned a number of times that this year Allen and I are focusing on getting our food storage together. Lots of people have asked questions relating to this so I'm just going to share what we're doing.

Here's the important part: I am by no means a food storage expert! There are literally thousands of people who have been doing this for years and would be SO much more qualified to write this post. So what I'm saying is take it all in stride. I'm sure it will take us a few years to work out all the kinks.

Why Food Storage?

Here's a couple of "extra" reasons why we're finally making a push to do our storage this year (aside from the following the prophet bit). As we've come into an oil crisis I've really been forced to ponder what would happen if gas prices really really jumped. One analyst predicted that if Israel bombed Iran (which there was talk of over the summer), that gas prices would go up to about $12/gallon. I've already noticed a huge increase in the price of many groceries and cannot imagine what this kind of jump would do to prices. Having a 3 month supply would allow for us to not be affected immediately by this kind of spike. Many speculate that truckers wouldn't drive and so there might not be any food to buy at any price!

Another blogger really got me thinking when she pointed out how absolutely horrible it would be to send her kids to bed hungry at night. To know that she could have done something about it but chose not to heed the counsel of the prophet. I'm not trying to be preachy here, at all. When she wrote it on her blog, my heart hurt thinking about what it would be like for my family if we didn't have food or couldn't afford it.

Water

Water is a huge issue for most of us. The church recommends having 1 gallon of drinking water per person per day for 14 days. So for our family that is 70 gallons of just drinking water. Add in water to cook, clean and bathe and you would really need substantially more than that. We purchased these 55 gallon water barrels several months ago along with a hand pump to get it out of the barrels. We would really like to get two more to ensure we had enough for everything. From what I understand, as long as the barrels are not directly on concrete or the ground, it is fine to drink for at least 5 years.

We store them on the side of our house where no one can see them. We also have quite a bit of bottled water stored in with our food storage.

3 Month Storage

To figure out our 3 month storage I have broken things into meals. Breakfast was the easiest/cheapest so I focused on getting 3 months worth of breakfasts first. I have cold cereal, pancake mix and syrup and oatmeal in my storage. I figured out roughly how much of each thing I would need and purchased when I found good sales. I actually like cold cereal quite a bit since it is "stand alone" - meaning I wouldn't have to use water or any other ingredients - it's edible as is. I have about 25 boxes of cereal in my food storage that I paid less than $1 for each box. Here's a little stroll down the "cereal aisle" in my closet (and really, my husband and son think they've died and gone to heaven)

I did the same thing with lunch - I have peanut butter, jelly plus everything I would need to make bread (I figured 1.5 loaves a week and then made sure I had all the ingredients for 3 months worth of loaves). I also have ramen and mac n cheese for lunches. I have lots of canned and frozen fruit stored (not my favorite but would do if fresh produce weren't available)

Dinners are the hardest. I have lots of stapes on hand - rice, beans, pasta and sauces. I also have the ingredients for a lot of the dinners I make regularly - stuff for soups, casseroles, etc. The last thing we are stocking is our extra freezer. Right now I have about 20 lbs. each of beef and chicken, 1o pounds of pork, frozen shredded cheese, butter and frozen veggies. I also pretty much at least double every recipe I make these days so I have about 25 ready made dinners in my freezer (enough for at least a full month when factoring in leftovers).

Don't forget snacks! Again, I've stocked up with sales on things like pretzels, crackers, granola bars, fruit snacks etc. I also have a whole ton of baking mixes - brownies, cakes, muffins, etc. I think one of the most important things to have plenty of is spices/seasonings. I have been trying to get more of the spices I use most. If all we had left was rice, I'm sure I'd be thrilled that I'd purchased those 5 bottles of soy sauce.

Storage

Another huge issue for us is storage. We can't put anything in the garage and have no basement. So we've gotten really creative. I've begun using plastic storage boxes to store many of my staples. A 60 quart box can hold 100 lbs. of sugar or flour. I also use them to store some of my snacks to save shelf space for canned goods. They're water and pest proof and easily accessible. One of my snack bins:

100 lbs. of flour:

Other essentials:

Now that we have much of our 3 month food supply, I've started to think about what other essentials I would hate to be without. My top things: Toilet paper, laundry detergent, diapers/wipes and feminine hygiene products. I can't imagine my life without these things so now I have a 3 month supply of these things as well.

I also had to figure out a plan for Addison. Her food needs will be changing quite a bit over the next year. I have 3 months of baby cereal, lots of baby food but most importantly, a food grinder. Hopefully she would be able to eat a lot of what we are eating as long as it's ground up.

Whew! That's all my brain can get out in one day. I'll do another post about long term storage soon! Hope this answers most of your questions or helps someone out!