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If there was a job description for my role in our household, the number one item would be "food supply". It's my job to make sure that there is always enough food for us. I grow it, can it, buy it, and manage it.
Just as we all clean out our refrigerators periodically to ensure we're not letting any foods go to waste, if you keep a back-up pantry or home-can a lot of produce, we need to periodically go through all that we have in store, take an inventory. I do this about 3 times per year. It helps keep me organized, makes better use of my space, and prevents loss of foods from exceeding the sell-by date.
Wednesday afternoon, I had an appointment with my back-up pantry. I pulled everything off the shelves, checked sell-by dates, sorted what I had into logical groups, set aside those items that were open and partially used, then put it all back into place. I made note of what I overbought last year as well as what I was lacking.
The packages that were partially used -- these are products such as boxes of crackers where there are several wrapped stacks of crackers in one box or the same situation with a super bonus sized package of spaghetti pasta, or baggies of foods from the bulk bins, or partially-consumed bags of baking items that I don't want snacked-up (chocolate chips and nuts). These items had been scattered amongst the shelves. In my cleaning on Wednesday, I put them together in a shallow, open box, so at least now I'll know where to look for these foods before opening a fresh package. Why I didn't think to corral these items together before escapes me.
I began building this emergency pantry one year ago this month. It's interesting for me to see what I bought too much of, what I bought too little of, and of which items I bought just the right amount -- the Goldilocks of my pantry.
Foods I bought too much of included pasta, instant mashed potatoes, canned tomatoes, white rice, whole wheat flour, pinto beans, canned corn, powdered milk, and jarred applesauce. And the foods that I bought too little of included coffee and decaf (we constantly ran out) and vegetable oil. I bought just about the right amount of peanut butter (one jar left), raisins (ran out 3 weeks ago), Parmesan cheese (ran out 3 weeks ago), most of the canned vegetables, white flour, sugar,and cocoa powder. The good news for the items that I bought too much of, all of these foods will continue to keep in the back-up pantry for several more months or can be frozen to stretch their usable life even longer.
One of my observations from this inventory is that I overbought more than I underbought. I had intended to buy just about a year's supply on many essential pantry goods and a winter's supply of produce-related items (knowing my garden would provide produce beginning in early spring). My conclusion is that having never put together such a back-up pantry, I did okay if not a little bit skewed in my planning due to extensive media fear-mongering.
Another observation -- we don't have a basement, just this small space with shelves behind the door in my office. If I needed to store additional amounts or if my space were even smaller, I could cram more in by eliminating the boxes for many items. Boxes make stacking look orderly, but they take up a lot of space.
My last observation is how fortunate we are to live in a time when we are able to buy what we need and when we need it for the most past. Imagine living on a small farm 200 years ago, a time when you had to produce all of your food for a year in one season and find time and energy to put it all away for keeping. Having a lot of children would mean that eventually they would reach an age when they could be of serious help. However, you still had to deal with all aspects of raising small children before those years while at the same time you were producing and putting away food. And we often struggle in these days just to take care of our smaller families.
These are just some of my thoughts after having cleaned out and organized our emergency food storage. You got to come along for the ride because I don't think any of my family members would want to hear about my thoughts on our back-up pantry.
