Happy Friday to you! I hope you're having a good one, and that you're excited about talking pantry with me! When I use the term pantry, I mean many different types of pantries or collectively, the stockpile!
I began stockpiling in earnest around the beginning of 2020. Things were not looking good for the year, and I saw the writing on the wall before other people did, thanks to a few bloggers I follow. Luckily, I had just bought several months' worth of bath tissue, so I turned my stockpiling efforts to other areas.
I like soap, so I started there. I used my local drug store's coupons and rebates to buy soap each month for about a year, anytime it would go on deep discount. I also asked for soap for gifts and found different types of soap for body and shampoo. Irish spring, in particular, is useful for deterring pests, so that is stored with fabric items! Soap doesn't need rotating, because it doesn't go bad. However, it is one of the first items to disappear in a major war. I like being clean, so this was a no brainer!
I extended this cleaning streak with ways to clean my house. When I stripped this down to its basic form, I bought supplies in bulk for my non-toxic cleaner. I clean my whole house with it, therefore it's not much to store comparatively. I bought extra supplies for laundry powder, and store those where my cleaner collection would have gone! Again, these were purchased during the sales cycles, so I didn't wind up paying full price for them.
When we talk about food, building a pantry is not as easy as soap or cleaners, since everything has an expiration date. At the advice of another blogger, I bought three, 5-gallon buckets with lids that are food safe. One is filled with 4-pound bags of sugar that are rotated. Another is filled with five-pound bags of flour. The third has both rice bags and bags of beans in it. All of these are food items we use, and they are rotated out when new comes in. I follow best practices when it comes to freezing flour and sugar before storage to deter pests. And these three buckets are one of the best ways to cover food needs. On my pantry shelves are canned veggies, fruits, and milk. I also keep jars of coconut oil and honey. I try to keep a healthy stash of teas and coffee. I need to revisit the coffee needs soon, as we've used most of what was there!
Perishable foods are a different animal altogether, and I don't always do well at keeping more than necessary. We've lost power and lost a fridge this year, so I'm not confident in freezing items to keep them fresh. I'd rather find a canned version for longer storage options.
I'm a seamstress, so there are a few things I keep that would help me tremendously in a time or war or depression. The first item is under five dollars, but wow, they are necessary! I bought a multi-pack of so many different types of hand sewing needles. From what I've read, they were extremely rare during WWII, as women tried to mend and continue to mend their clothing and household goods. I had a shocking amount of thread already, but I bought a small round tray of thread in colors for mending clothing. I didn't have brown or black thread for quilting, so these were different than my normal range of colors. It helps to think of what colors we wear, and work from there. I keep extras of my favorite hand sewing and machine needles, and I continue to learn how to mend by both methods. A basic sewing kit with a well-fitting thimble and a variety of needles is necessary. Sometimes the skills are part of the stockpile.
Let's chat for a moment about how to pay for all this. When I first started doing this, I read a homemaker that took five dollars each grocery trip to buy items for the stockpile. Some budget gurus suggest a percentage of the grocery bill for pantry building, like ten percent. In my own practice, I chose to set a grocery budget, then intentionally spend less than the budget by finding the best deals on normal items. The surplus goes to stockpile upkeep. I also use an app that gives me cash back on certain items at the grocery store. The cash back allows me to either purchase something larger that we need at a "discount", or it allows me to pick up small items I know we need to tuck away. My last method for paying for stockpile items is a side hustle. A little bit of passive income goes a long way towards purchasing pantry needs.
I pray this has been useful to you! And I pray you never need to rely solely on your pantry for sustenance!
Stacy
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