littlepitcher:

Mason jars and lids.  Vinegar

 

littlepitcher:

My extremely large supply of home-canned fruits and pickles--in the city, from free fruit and farmers' markets-- sales on canned beans,and markdown meats, and a local spring saved my hiney

This is more how I do mine. I do have pasta, rice, oatmeal, etc, but the bulk of my food storage is the fruits, vegetables & meats put up in the mason jars. It'slike making your own convenience food : heat & eat.   If your family likes green beans well enough to eat them once a week, & you eat one pint per meal, then you need 52 pints for a year supply to get you thru to next year.

zohnerfarms:

The only place in the US where I have encountered a prohibition on storing food is in certain extended care facilities

 

I can see where places that are not private homes would have rules about foods, any kinds of foods, being kept in the rooms or apartments. I don't see how they could tell people they can't store reasonable amounts of food in their private homes.

 

Cinnamonhuskies:

I think you should stock what you actually eat. My family hates tuna fish and 6 jars of peanut butter do us for a year.

 

I agree with buying what works for your family.  I have printed out the list to use a guideline for making my own stockpile list.  Thanks for the link!

When our local disaster relief organization educated us about how tenuous our nations food chain is, I decided to amend my existing tightwad tendency to buy in bulk when on sale into an organized food storage plan. The Latter Day Saints food storage calculator website is a good starting point to compute how much food your family might need, though you'll probably need to amend it to suit your families eating habits as I personally doubt our family would ever get into grinding our own wheat. Over the past 3 years I've gradually built our 2-week stash into a well-rounded 18-week supply, with probably another 6-8 weeks of not-so-well rounded eating.

Once you start storing more than 3 months worth of food and supplies, you do need to start paying careful attention to the shelf-life of foods and be sure to actually cook and eat the things you are storing (like dried beans, which everybody acknowledges are cheap and healthy, but we all "forget" to put out to soak the night before). Canned goods -could- be eaten past two years, but they start to lose color and flavor so you have to be sure to keep them well marked and rotated. Dried grains and legumes can succumb to mealy-type bugs. We have these annoying little brown moths in our area which get into everything and leave their filthy little larvae munching through our dry goods!!! Putting bay leaves in the flour and pasta bins didn't work, so right now I'm experimenting with keeping little muslin bags of cedar chips on the shelf next to them (will let everybody know how that works). Specially prepared freeze-dried and vacuum packed "survival foods" last much longer without deterioration, but they're also very expensive so I've been reluctant to stock up on anything but the hardest-to-keep items (like powdered eggs). My goal is to build our supply stash to 1 year, but I'm also committed to not breaking the bank or losing perfectly good food to waste while doing it.

I would suggest that Brandy start by creating a price book a'la Amy Daczyzyn "Tightwad Gazette" and use that $5 per week she has budgeted to buy extra of whatever is on sale. She should also read up on root cellaring, canning, and general food preservation (even if she has no plans to build a root cellar or can vegetables) so she has an idea about what foods store better under which conditions. She should also invest in a good open storage system that will work in her home (such as shelves or under-bed storage bins). If space is tight, she could look for unused "dead areas" in her home, such as the 4-5" space behind doors, along hallway walls, and above her head, to put shelves (2x4 shelves are cheap and just the right width for canned goods). Once she's started to build up a 6 weeks reserve of sale items she uses the most, she can use the LDS website and other "emergency preparedness" lists to help her refine her food storage plan to fill in any gaps she might have. With only $5 per week budgeted, this will take time, but if she persists eventually she'll build up a pretty nice stash -and- save a bundle of cash.

cheap_yankee:

We have these annoying little brown moths in our area which get into everything and leave their filthy little larvae munching through our dry goods!!! Putting bay leaves in the flour and pasta bins didn't work,

Our bug troubles are are a bit different. I have issues with weevils from time to time. Freezing packages of flour and sugar helps with those. I am not sure it would be so easy if it's moths getting into your packages. Are you even finding them in well sealed containers?

cheap_yankee:

I would suggest that Brandy start by creating a price book a'la Amy Daczyzyn "Tightwad Gazette" and use that $5 per week she has budgeted to buy extra of whatever is on sale.

My personal goal is to increase my stock, not start one. Normally I have about a month and a half of food in the freezer, three to six months worth of staples and six months to a year's worth of household, personal and laundry items. I'd like to increase my staples to at least six months worth for everything. My freezer can't hold anymore food than what I keep stocked but I hope to upgrade to something larger eventually.

I admit, I don't use a price book. I have attempted one many times and find it to be more time consuming and difficult than helpful. I think they are fantastic ideas, I just haven't gotten one to work out for me.

 

 

 

 

OK, dumb question here--is there a price book app for an iPhone (or for Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Palm)?  I don't use one for routine purchases since I pretty much have the Save-A-Lot routine memorized, but it would be great for couponers or for those who may have several grocery stores on the drive home from work and can combine trips. 

If you don't soak beans overnight, you can get them done almost as fast by bringing them to a boil, turning them off, soaking an hour.  I rinse that water off since it contains most of the mucopolysaccharides which generate the notorious bean methane.

 I am a huge Price Book fan.I tried one iPhone app on my iPod Touch that wasn't very good. It was difficult to use and crashed a lot. There's a new one that has just been released that is very well done. I bought it and have started using it and think it's almost perfect. The software developer is planning an internet application in the future. Sync with your iPod/iPhone, maybe?

Here's a link to the application: Price Book application.

In the interest of full disclosure, The Dollar Stretcher earns 25 cents if you buy one. 

The use of bay leaves as a moth deterrent has been shown to be an old wive's tale which doesn't work. On the other hand, grain products which come in paper packaging often come with weevil eggs too. They can be frozen to kill off the newly-hatched critters, allowed to come to room temp, then frozen again to finish off the newer eggs. I find that vacuum-sealing such items in half-gallon canning jars works for me.

 

Anna Marie:

They can be frozen to kill off the newly-hatched critters

I like to freeze flours to prevent bugs. 

   

Thank you for your post!