Practical Home Preparedness: A simple step-by-step guide to creating a disaster-ready home. by Reid William

Author:Reid, William [Reid, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Independent
Published: 2022-11-27T00:00:00+00:00

Good - Overstock your Pantry and Freezer

The first option is one that perhaps you’ve already accomplished. If you were shut off in your home today, how many days worth of food could you manage to squeeze out of what’s currently in your pantry and freezer? It’s likely that you already have a few days worth of food there, so if you want to be prepared for a longer scenario, then it’s as simple as adding more food there. Here’s a simple approach. For one month, collect your grocery store receipts. At the end of the month, highlight all of the items that are pantry or freezer items. This should give you a rough idea of how much of those items that you consume in a month. Next time you go to the grocery store, buy an extra of each of those items. Before you do this, it may be necessary to purge your pantry and freezer of expired or undesired food. These few steps alone are likely to extend your food supply by a week or more. Another approach for those shopping on a budget, is to just grab an extra of some item, any item, that you’re already getting from the grocery store on each trip. Over time, what’s left in your supply will gradually increase. Keep in mind that these approaches don’t apply to fresh and/or refrigerated foods, because those don’t have the shelf life that you can count on during a disaster. If you want to take your planning a little bit further, an inventory sheet like the one shown below can help you keep track of what you have and your target amounts. The “Current Quantity” column is where you keep track of the number of items that you have stored. This column can be updated as you add or remove items from your pantry. The “Target Quantity” is the number of units of each item that you intend to keep in storage. One of the benefits of this approach is that your additional food supply is made up of foods that you already eat regularly, so if you are rotating your food through your pantry in a “first-in, first-out” manner, then your food is unlikely to expire. An up-to-date inventory list can serve as a grocery list. Determining your “Target Quantity” of each item can take some trial and error. Once you begin tracking, you may be surprised by how much or how little of different items that you use. Who knows, tracking your food use might even reveal some unhealthy eating habits that shifts your purchasing and eating habits! If you do want to keep track of your inventory, then this takes a little bit of work keeping your list up to date. For a “lower-maintenance” approach, read on to our Better and Best approaches.

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