Food Storage 101

What do you know about food storage? What would you like to know about food storage? I feel like food storage and money saving go hand in hand. The leaders of our church have counseled us to have enough food storage for our family for one year. Does that sound like a daunting task to you? It does to me too. But it is to help us in case of unemployment, decrease in income for miscellaneous reasons, disaster, etc.

Recently, our church leaders have "lowered" the time period to three months, mainly so people don't get so overwhelmed with the idea of food storage. So that is my goal right now: to have enough food stored to feed my family for three months.

How long do you think you could feed your family on what you have in your cupboards? If you have seen the natural disasters in the news, you know that sometimes it's not always an option to run to the store. What about in times of storms or blackouts? Here in California, we are most susceptible to earthquakes and our cities being under strain (at the very least) in the aftermath.

I am not here to get on a soapbox about food storage. And I'm definitely not here to preach a sermon. But what a lot of other money-saving bloggers call "stockpiling" I call food storage. And I want to build mine up. I'm going to post about my endeavors every now and then, so if you're interested, follow along!

To get things started, I wanted to show you how I have my food storage set up right now. Although I have a "pantry" in my kitchen (a set of double tall cabinets), most of my food is kept outside in the garage, unless it would spoil too quickly from heat out there: salad dressings, sauces, stuff like that.

I have two large plastic shelving units that we bought at Target. I think we got them on sale for about $35 each. I try to group things that go together: cereals, crackers, juice, etc. and then I have a shelf with ingredients: cream soups, diced tomatoes, chicken stock and another shelf with "meals", like chili, tuna, soups, and things like that.

On the very bottom shelf I have a storage of water. We have filled cleaned used juice bottles with water. We will rotate those out every 6 to 12 months. In an emergency, they say you should have a gallon of water per person per day. Obviously this is not enough water for my family of 5 for 3 months. But that is something I will have to work toward. I think here we have enough for our family for three days, which should be the bare minimum.

I hope this is not totally overwhelming. Sometimes when I think about it, I wonder how it can be accomplished. But we have been advised to do it slowly and thoughtfully, and not to go into debt to do it.

I'm interested in your thoughts on food storage and welcome your questions. Look forward to more posts on food storage!