Food Storage-where to start?

[kalagasa]

So I'm seriously thinking that my newlywed husband and I need to start our food storage. The only thing we are running into is the fact that we are very tight on money and we both currently live with my mother whom is a pack-rat and the only room we have is the bedroom we live in currently. Is there any advise (reading material, books or otherwise) that you could give me to start this and maintain it with such a small amount of space and funds to do so? Thanks a bunch!

[Winnie G]

Salt, easy start then cases of soup, cheep. Kraft dinner, but a exstra one of something each shopping day and carry on from there.

If there is a bishops cannery near you see about buying from there,

There also should be a sister in RS who's the home storage rep. We have one here and once in a while the YW dry pack for the ward and I buy mine that way,

[DocG]

Here's a link to some great articles on food storage, etc. that may be of help to you from Emergency Essentials:

Emergency Essentials Insight Articles

[Guest]

There's a preparedness section on this forum that has tons of tidbits.

I don't actually have a book to suggest but this is how my husband and I started - we started with a 1 week plan - plan meals for an entire week for the 2 of us that we can put in storage (we only store what we normally eat). We bought all this with our normal grocery shopping. Our meal plan was meager - 1 pouch of just add water muffins, 1 can of spam, 1/8 lb of rice, 1 can of green beans, 2 gallons of water (from the tap using empty Hawaiian Punch containers) for one day covered both of us. 1 week was easy.

When we find a sale or get some money, we expand by another week until we were able to get 3 months worth (except for water - we didn't get enough water because we didn't have space for it but since we got a splash pool - oversized tub really - so we figured we can use that water in a pinch). Then we added essentials - like soap, toothpaste, etc.

We had our food storage on the closet floor - we had a 12-foot long closet (no walk-in closet then), so we put the food storage underneath my husband's pants.

They have under-bed rolling wire shelving now at lowe's/home depot and they're perfect for food storage. it won't hold big items but it is perfect for canned goods and such.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

[john doe]

Start small if space and/or money is limited. Buy an extra package of non-perishable food product each time you go shopping. Buy products that you will eat and are fairly easy to prepare, especially if power goes out. If you drink soda, fill a few bottles with water and stow them in the closet or under the bed. Make sure you rotate the stock regularly to keep the storage fresh. Many camping supply stores will sell 72hr. kits in day/back packs that are great for quick-run situations.

[vestig8or]

We haven't started yet, either, but I found this Web site, and find it helpful and fun: Food Storage Made Easy

[confuzzled]

Another good idea is to create a 72hr kit for both of you

[Roseslipper]

like everyone alse said. start small, put items under ur bed or in closet or just against the wall in a box. when things are on sale pick up a few extra things,like buy one get one at half price etc. use one can put the other in ur storage, or buy 2 cans of this and that and store, try to get them on sale..it will grow and yes buy things u like to eat, and things u might need. like toiletress, sorry i cant spell.. and yes 72 hr kit is a good thing to work on as well....

[California_Dreaming]

Kayagasa

You said “The only thing we are running into is the fact that we are very tight on money and we both currently live with my mother whom is a pack-rat and the only room we have is the bedroom we live in currently.”

I have an idea. If your mother is a “Pack Rat”, hold a garage sale and use the money to start your food storage.

Actually I started a little differently from what most of the people recommend. I went to the cannery and purchased a 25# bag of rice. (Rice $10+, cans, lids, O2 absorbers $5+) So for $15 I had 25# of rice in cans for long term storage, next, I did the same with white beans (Navy bean soup). I know that this may not be the way for everyone, but figured that I would have something to eat; I wouldn’t starve, even if my taste buds died of boredom.

I expanded my purchases while changing my daily menus, adding purchases of spices, and discovering different methods of preparing meals. I have a friend that has a recipe for Rice-a-Roni that you make from rice and spaghetti & spices. I need to get it from her.

My 72 hour kit is basically a “Bug out Bag” so I purchased RME’s from the local Army/Navy Surplus store for about $1.25 on sale. With 2000 calories per meal I figure that sharing the RME would extend the days, even though I might not be filled up, I would have the necessary caloric intake. Just watch out for expiration dates, some stores sell RME’s with only a year or so till expired.

Unrelated to food storage I started taking classes from my local university extension on preserving foods by canning and dehydrating, just wanted to start eating healthier and save what I couldn’t eat up from what I produce in my backyard garden. I have noticed that this has greatly expanded my food storage with fruits, vegetables and jams & jellies.

Good luck, glad to see you are starting.

[faif2d]

A book that I found very interesting was "TEOTWAWKI" By Rawls. Just go to Amazon.com and put in TEOTWAWKI. Has a lot of very good info. A little more aimed toward "the end of the world as we know it" but lots of good thought provoking info.

[LDSVALLEY]

You can do food storage for free. Set up a grocery budget, it helps if you create a meal plan but will work without it as well. Create a shopping list of items you need. Go through sales flyers for your local grocery stores and note any items on your list. Or sales items you can substitute for something on your list. Now the free part.

Lets say you wanted 5 cans of soup and they cost $1.00 each. You thus budget $5.00 for soup.

In the flyer a local store has a sale on soup for .50. Buy 10 cans you spend $5.00.

Put the 5 extra cans away on a shelf, next week buy your normal 5 cans of soup and put them on the shelf using the 5 cans extra from the sale.

Thus you created a food storage of 5 cans, by rotating the soup used it stays new and it cost you ZERO dollars.

We did this week after week, spending no extra money unless we had some we could throw on a sale item to buy more. After 3 years of doing this bit by bit our family of 5 received 2 blessings from it.

1 because we reached what I call critical mass food storage 80% of our groceries were sales items so our $500 per month food budget purchased $620 or more worth of food each month.

2 When I was unemployed for 8 months and the only income source for our family all our bills were paid each month, we had plenty to eat, and I didn't have to scramble for the first lousy job that came along. Actually I was able to take 3 months and get my mentally ill father the medical help he desperately needed.

If your family has little money you need to do this, even if a job loss doesn't happen having a food reserve allows you to divert grocery money to urgent expenses for a time, but doesn't create the temptation to spend on a want like money in a savings fund can.

[LDSVALLEY]

As for the space issue, the first apartment we had I threw out our old box spring, put a sheet of plywood down to hold the mattress and put milk crates filled with food storage under it. If I remember correctly 40 cans of soup fit in one. For a queen size mattress use 3 rows of 6 crates two high or 18. boxes and other stuff can fit between the crates if they won't fit in them.

More FREE food storage is many stores give points for purchases, turn them into food storage items.

[pitcher]

Get a copy of the book Emergency Preparedness The Right Way by Howard Godfrey. It is available on Amazon. The information will save you money in the long run by keeping you from wasteing it on poor choices.

[Guest Alana]

We don't have a box spring and the boxes from the cannery fit PERFECTLY under our bed. I have a lot of beans and rice because those are things that are very easy for me to incorporate into our regular meals. I have one extra cupboard that I use just for canned fruits and veggies and such. When things go on sale at the store, I'll buy 10 cans instead of 2 or 3. This base, plus adding a little bit of extras to it (we now have some wheat and canned milk and oil) really do a lot for peace of mind, make it all manageable and it doesn't get wasted.

[havejoy]

If I were starting over with limited space and funds I would go to the cannery and put up as much rice and beans as I could fit into 75% of the available space. A large portion of the world lives on those 2 things.

The other 25% of the space I would fill with salt, powdered milk, oats, nuts, and soups mixes.

[UrbanFool]

At the lds.org site, they have a "starter" pack of food items. I hope the link works.

Product Details ( Family Home Storage Starter Kit )

[WyomingEMT]

We've got a ton, yes I said a ton of wheat, rice and beans in the basement and 25 year old Perm-a-Pack #10 cans filled with who know what. When the end comes I hope the bishop call on me first. I'll gladly donate as long as I don't have to pack it out of the basement. The smart thing is to pick 10 meals that you and your family like and fix all of the time, everyone has there favorites. Then go to the store and buy the products that will make up these meals for a full month. Then next month buy another months worth of food that will make up the 10 meals. You will have already started to rotate the food because its everyones favorites, and you'll be eating your favorites "right" Do that for three or four months and soon you will have a 3 month supply that you like and eat and most important, keep rotated. This is only a start on your quest for a basement full of food. good luck.

[UrbanFool]

You should double-check those #10 cans. I thought they were best for 10 years. You might want to start rotating those.

[WyomingEMT]

Thats what I mean. Everything we have is old as the hills. buy food your familys going to eat and keep it fresh by rotating it. Thats the really work, rotate.

[UrbanFool]

It would be fairly difficult to rotate your foodstuffs if they're holding up your bed. We've got a king-sized mattress!

[UrbanFool]

There's no time like the present to start pulling those cans out to inventory them. Pressure cookers are great for million year-old beans, and use minimal energy.

[WyomingEMT]

I'm going to fill my freezer with TV dinners and buy a generator, My wife and I will be set. Hope she lets me have the salisbury steak.

[UrbanFool]

I'm going to fill my freezer with TV dinners and buy a generator, My wife and I will be set. Hope she lets me have the salisbury steak.

Good luck with that!

[LDSVALLEY]

It would be fairly difficult to rotate your foodstuffs if they're holding up your bed. We've got a king-sized mattress!

It was annoying but it worked. What we did with our Queen mattress was flip it and the plywood up against the dresser at the foot of the bed and rotate the food only once a month. I would spend 30min to 60min moving stuff around, adding in new items, taking out the oldest etc.

Annoying but when my job, the only source of income for my family, disappeared a year or so later we were able to sustain ourselves for 9 months, take care of my mentally ill Father and move to a better place to raise our children because we started out doing this with the only space we had in our small apartment.

We were still learning in the church but food storage started to nag at me every day. I used the no money no space excuses with myself but it got worse and worse so I finally gave in and started it. Because I knew I had to do this I found a way.

It was annoying, a pain in the butt, more effort then I wanted to take on at that time.

But my Father (I am not making this up) would have been dead in 2001, my family would not have had the advantages the move gave us and I would have had to take the first crappy job I could get if I had not have taken on that annoying under the bed storage to get us started.

The biggest thing with food storage is this

DO SOMETHING TODAY!, DO SOMETHING TOMORROW ! THEN DO SOMETHING THE NEXT DAY !

[UrbanFool]

Amen!