Getting Started

I was asked a variant of this question the other day, but it can take on many forms:

• How do I start getting my pantry ready for uncertain times?
• What food do I need to get?
• What should I put aside?

They are all similar questions and the answer boils down to ‘it depends’. So let’s discuss some of the things it depends upon.

Considerations for Stocking Up

As in most things, your two top considerations are time and resources.

It is much easier to stock up if you start well before a period of uncertainty starts. The more time you give yourself, the more options you will have.

For instance, if you can grow a garden and can preserve the rewards of your harvest, you can stock up relatively inexpensively, but it is at a great cost in time.

On the other hand, if you’ve waited until the hard times begin, then you’ve given yourself no time to find good deals or alternative sources for necessary products or food. This will almost certainly mean that anything you can find will be higher priced and you may face an issue of limited to no availability – take the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even outside of international disasters, the more time you have to prepare the better your options will be. For instance, investing in a savings account – with compounding interest – when you’re young is much better than trying to squirrel away all you can save beginning five years before your retire.

So What do I Need?

It is difficult to tell you specifically what you need. What I can tell you is that you already know and you have a pretty good idea of how much you need.

You know what you and your family like to eat – and what you don’t like. So it would be useless for me to tell you to get 4 (or 400) cans of corn. If your family can’t stand corn that would be more wasteful than buying junk food or candy – because if you followed that advice, you wouldn’t have the resources for what you truly need.

The first step in determining what you need is to look at what you currently use.

If you eat canned corn, get canned corn. If you don’t know how to cook and normally buy frozen dinners, get frozen dinners (then learn to cook and start eating real food). If you need a good starting place, check out the Tools page on this site for exactly that kind of guidance.

Where you may run afoul is with protein. In the modern Western world, we eat a lot of protein – usually in the form of meat. If a meal just isn’t a meal without a chunk of animal on your plate (such as is the case for me), then stocking up on animal protein may be a little outside the norm.

Having meat in store-bought products (such as canned stews or chili) is one way to go about it, as is purchasing canned meat such as SPAM, corned beef, canned chicken and canned fish. Another avenue for those with the skills, or who are willing to learn the skills, is to home can meat. Purchasing meat from the grocer or butcher and taking it home to can means you do not need a freezer.

Where Do I Put it All?

Freezer space brings up another question, where do you store your food? Again, it depends on what you have.

Cool, dark places are best. Even canned food last longer in cool places than in warm or unregulated places.  If you have a basement, that is probably a good place to consider. For those without basements, a dedicated pantry would be nice, but is may already be filled with your daily-use items. So consider under the bed, on closet floors, or in dedicated storage cabinets specifically for your stored food.

Wherever you decide, make sure that it is accessible. You want to ensure that you can get to what you need and you also need to ensure that you can view it for inventory purposes so you know when you need to restock – or so that you don’t forget you already have twenty cans of pickled herrings and don’t need to get any more.

Let’s Look at Your Window

Once you know what you need and where you’re going to put it, and assuming you have time, with what you know and build.

Determine your window so you can determine your stock level. Your window is the amount of time that you want to accommodate. If you’re unsure – and especially if you are on a tight budget – start with a relatively small window – such as one week. That may seem very short, but the most recent study I could find (from 2012) related that approximately 53% of Americans do not have three-days worth of food in their homes. In other countries, where smaller refrigerators and daily trips to the local grocers are more the norm, it is likely even less. So for many people, a full week supply could be considered aspirational. If you already have a week, great for you, choose another time frame such as a month or three months. Build toward that goal as resources allow.

When you go to the grocery, get a little extra. It may be that you get the five-pound bag a shredded cheese and split it into smaller bags that you store in the freezer. Perhaps you get three cans of vegetables rather than just two – then set the extra to the side. Try to find the ‘extra’ items when they are on sale or have coupons so that you have more resources to continue your plans.

The trick is that the ‘extra’ you bought should not be consumed as a part of your regular diet. Remember you decided on a stock level, right? These extras go into stock. If you eat your two cans, go get two more cans (or three, if it supports your stock level) until you have reached your stock level. Then begin rotating.

What’s This with Rotating?

Rotating stock is the best way to make sure your pantry has the best, freshest food available at any given time. When you purchase items for stock, add them to the back of your shelves (/freezer/pantry). Use from the front, but replenish from the back.

When you use something from stock (which means you’ve already used your daily-use items), you replenish to get back to the stock level you determine earlier.

For example, let’s go back to that canned corn. Let’s say you keep two in your pantry have a stock level of six. Since you have two in daily-use, you will have four in storage. You use one from the pantry. You add that one can of corn to the grocery list and replenish. That new can goes to the back of storage and the one on the front of the shelf in storage goes to the back of the shelf in the pantry.

You’ve just successfully rotated your stock.

Is there More to It?

There is always more to it, but that doesn’t it has to be difficult. Food is just one item. What about your hygiene products (toothpaste, shampoo, paper towels, soap and yes, toilet paper)?

Are you on dietary restrictions? If so, make sure that what you are stocking accommodates those restrictions.

Do you take prescription medications? Try to find a way to develop a safe supply that you can fall back on if needed – always rotate prescriptions to ensure are taking the freshest possible medications.

Do you have fuel stored? I once lived in a small town where the single long-distance internet cable coming into town was damaged. Gas stations no longer had the ability to take payments and had to shut down. Having an extra 5 gallon can in the storage shed in the backyard, or making sure you never drop below a half tank (which is a variation on the stock level / rotation strategy) can make sure you’re able to get to work, or gat out of town if needed.

Wrapping it Up

In the end, it is more important to do something than nothing, as long as that ‘something’ is not a waste of resources (remembering that time is a resource). So whatever you choose to do is a good first step. Just keep taking those steps and you’ll soon find yourself well down the path to preparedness.