Starting the New Year – Rounding out Food Storage
- 19 Jan 2009
- phil801
- View Comments
The New Year is a great time to do a full inventory of your Food Storage – especially your rotating day to day storage – to make sure you know what you have. By doing this you’re able to make a list of things you need to get to re-stock everything and start the year with a fully year’s supply of food. We recently finished doing this at my house and I thought I would share some of the results with you.
It’s pretty much impossible to easily show you what a years supply of food looks like due to storage and other issues. The following pictures are not of my long term storage, they’re of my rotating storage that we eat from every day.
Once a month we glance through our storage areas and make notes of what has been depleted. As a general rule, I buy twice what is needed to replenish used stock. In this way we are constantly growing our supply and adding to the amount of time it can support us. We have about 8 – 9 months of regular food on hand given normal eating routines.
To start the New Year we did a full inventory and then spent several hours shopping to get full replenishment (and then some) for all the food items we store. As you can tell in the pictures, we store more than just food. We’ll be rounding out several non-food items in the next few weeks as well. As you can see above, our main store room has several shelves and quite a bit of food – what you don’t see is that we have a big pantry upstairs that is full as well as several other storage areas. Here is a better view of some of the shelves in our store room:
And a couple of our freezers:
The Cereal/Chips Pantry:
You can see in this last picture that we still need to replenish the cereal/chips closet a bit – thing is, we bought everything they had at the store :) We’ll get more when they do. This closet was re-stocked by my younger children as well, I need to go through and straighten it back up :)
If your storage isn’t far enough along to be able to just make a list and go buy everything, at least go through what you have and work with your master list to make a list of what you need! Now is the perfect time to make a little effort to make sure you have a list to work from this year. Trust me, there is great satisfaction in looking at a fully crossed off list, and then looking at what you built from it.
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Nice setup! My only issue,and I’m sure you have addressed,is the deep freezer.Got a generator? As far as all the frozen veggie’s I see in there,you should consider getting a dehydrator. I think the frozen 1 pound bag’s are cheaper in the long run,as your not buying the water. I dehydrate them and keep them in the fridge in tupperware to keep more freezer space open. Look’s like your set!
Oh if I just had that kind of room. My storage is tucked in so many closets, impromptu shelving, under beds and more. This definitely makes things easier to find and rotate.
@Dean Very good point – yes I have a generator! :) I also have over 50 gallons of gas stored for it. Interesting idea with dehydrating corn, I’ll have to give that a shot. That’s actually our rotating food and I love frozen corn, that supply will rotate about every 6 months or so. I think with dehydrating corn I’d want it more for long term storage. I’ve got several hundred pounds of dried corn in long term storage – in buckets I bought already filled.
@Jayce – it is very nice to have so much room :)
I also have over 50 gallons of gas stored for it.
Mind sharing how you store your gasoline? This might merit another post.. I’ve been struggling over how best to store gasoline without risking blowing off half of my house should a spark set something off. :)
hehe – I’m at risk right now :) I’m planning on building a fuel shed in the spring but for now, I have more than 10 5 gallon gas cans in my attached garage. Not safe, not smart, I know. But, I’ve only recently filled them all because of heightened concern to have them on hand. For the record:In this case, I recommend you NOT do what I’m doing :)
When I build the fuel storage area, I’ll definitely post about it.
Thanks for sharing.
How about water storage? Ogden had a 4-day water outage that showed me how bad things would be without water. No flushing toilets, no drinking water, no showers, no washed dishes. Most people have several days of food in the house without even thinking, but almost no one has enough water!
Here is what I am thinking about putting in my basement and rotating the water once a year with a hose and drain: 250 gallon indoor water tank
http://www.yourfoodstorage.com/store/503159/product/8523699632
I will also have around 10 cases of bottled water that provide more portable water.
Regarding gasoline, I would like to hear more about storage, rotation, and location.
@Tristan – first off, love your name! I nearly named one of my kids Tristan.
You’re absolutely right about storing water! I have several 50 gallon drums stored along with 200 “milk jugs” (they are actually 1 gallon jugs that water came in). The water in the jugs is primarily for flushing toilets.
You and Connor have convinced me – I will soon write posts on both water and gasoline storage :)
Here’s our water supply.
That’s 1,140 gallons. Or, put more simply a (slightly generous) one year supply for two adults.
Phil: as I mention in my water handout here, I strongly recommend against storing those milk jug-like containers for water. They are very flimsy and degrade quickly. I used to store them and the plastic degraded on a couple and the water ruined everything in my closet. Not a huge deal if they’re being stored in the garage or something, but they’re certainly not ideal.
I have never seen containers like that before, Connor. Where’d you get those?
I got them on a group buy about a year ago – the company said that we were the first group that they knew of that was buying them for non-commercial purposes. These are quite common for companies that store fertilizer or other liquids that they need to transport and use, stored in a pickup truck’s bed. Works great for water.
One place to get them is here, though shipping would likely be insane on these puppies. I love them because they’re stackable in the metal frames, the plastic bladder is food-grade, and the water retrieval is gravity-fed w/ the nozzle at the bottom. I also went out and bought some plumbing components to create an adapter that will take it from the standard “RV” hose size down to a garden hose nozzle, so I can hook up a hose and fill up buckets, water the plants (to rotate the water), etc.
I love ‘em. Maybe I’ll track down the person that organized the group buy and see if they’re ever planning on doing another – our prices were about half of what is showing on that website I linked to…
I’d be very interested if you could get that info. those are great looking.
Stay tuned, folks. I just heard back from the woman who organized the last group buy of these water tanks, and she said she’d love to throw another order together. The tanks have apparently gone up $20 since last year, but that’s still an excellent deal compared to retail.
She’s going to look into it tomorrow and get me details. Jayce, I’ll likely email you details once (or if) this takes off so you can do a post and spread the word. These are really great tanks.
Very Cool Connor! Looking forward to hearing more.
Love the pictures!! Shelf Reliance shelves are fantastic!!! Thanks for sharing.
Love the site Connor!!
Was wondering if you would be willing to email me the info about the water storage tanks so I can organize something similar where I live. Thanks so much!!!
Add me to that bulk purchase list for the bulk water containers.
Connor, would you send the link about the water storage tanks so that I may try to organize one up in WA?
Much as I’d like the excuse to see certain family members *cough* I can’t swing the time. With my full household, those containers would be a LOT more efficient that the 55 gallon containers! (6 people, 4 dogs, 2 cats and a snake…yeah, ummm…where would I PUT it all?)
oh for sure if it’s not too late, please add me to your list to contact if you do the water storage tank order. Thanks!
this is NOT AT ALL a facetious question, but a quite serious one.
What do y'all do about cycling stored survival foods that you really do not use in your non-SHTF life?
Dried beans, grains etc are no problem to cycle-out before their “expiration”, but what do you do about canned/packaged stuff that you don't really like to eat when it isn't absolutely necessary?
I can heat up a can of chili when I go camping.. but a a chuck roast and fresh chiles do not do well in a Rubbermaid tote…. I wont even talk about Mac and cheese in a box…… I probably ate a semi-load of it in college, but I don't HAVE to any more……
I think it's about learning to store foods you *will* eat. I know for my family that has led to us to start learning better how to better balance our diet with good, storable foods. And it's a process that's got a long ways to go, for sure.
Sure, we are eating more canned foods, but learning to use them as part of our food 'development cycle'.
This is a perfect design for our food bank! The shelves make for easy dispensing when one is building hampers for clients whose social assistance cheques are not enough to cover their grocery bills. Do you can and preserve fresh fruit and vegetables in season, too?
This is a perfect design for our food bank! The shelves make for easy dispensing when one is building hampers for clients whose social assistance cheques are not enough to cover their grocery bills. Do you can and preserve fresh fruit and vegetables in season, too?