I live in Utah where it’s almost a requirement for residency to have food storage. I know, I thought it was pretty strange too but out here, everyone has one. I didn’t think too much about it until I became a single parent and then I could see the wisdom of having food storage, just in case.
My problem became, number one, how to organize all this food, and number two, what should be in my food storage. Initially I had cases of cans under beds and in closets, boxes of cereal piled in the laundry room, everywhere I looked there was food without a home. Finally I bought some inexpensive plastic shelving and started organizing it. There really is no point in having food storage if you can’t tell what you have and are not able to get to it easily.
Once I had the organization of the food down I had to figure out what should be in there. Six cases of tomato paste really doesn’t benefit anyone. I did a lot of searching on the internet to come up with a system that would work for me. I found a website that recommended only buying what your family will actually eat, imagine that, guess the food pantry will have a lot of tomato paste. It also recommended buying according to a meal plan and rotating accordingly.
First I sat down and wrote out a list of thirty meals that my family will eat on a regular basis. Once I had the list of meals I made an ingredient list for each meal, breakfast, lunch and dinner, for thirty days. I kept that list by my computer which is where I check online for sales and coupons. As things went on sale I was able to stock up and before long I had a full thirty days of meals. I couldn’t purchase some things, dairy, meat and eggs, so I tried to work some meatless meals in there as well. Also have at least a week’s worth of meals you can make without power. If you have water in your food storage and a small camping stove you can cook a lot of things if there is a natural disaster and you are without some conveniences.
Use the list you made as your families meal plan for the month, you can always throw a special dinner in now and then. When you do your grocery shopping use what you buy to replace what is in the food storage so it’s constantly rotated.
If you keep up on your food storage in an emergency you will be well organized and prepared to feed your family.