February 02, 2009
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Just a quick note before we begin discussing food storage. I received a great comment yesterday to last week’s post Teaching Children to Budget, Family Dollars. Check it out. It is a long, but well thought out and full of more tips concerning incentives for your children.
Secondly, I announced our January Give Away winner yesterday. Time to get busy and enter our February Give Away by sharing your thoughts and commenting on posts this month.
You all remember Old Mother Hubbard…the poor doggie had none because her cupboards were bare. That will not happen to us. Today we begin our quest to fill our cupboards, just in case. Remember the days of General Stores? They had everything to meet your needs from food, to cloth, to cleaning supplies, seeds and tools. Together we are going to build a General Store within our own homes.
A few weeks ago I asked you to prepare for today by getting a note book, a permanent marker and an empty jar. Now, let’s get started!
1) This week I would like you to designate that jar as part of your food storage fund. Each night place all your coins and any change you find on the street or in the sofa in the jar. I never spend change at the store anymore, except for my pennies. Be sure to include your spouse in your plan and even get the kids involved in adding money to the jar. This is just one of many ways we will discuss to fund Our General Store.
2) Set a budget. Sit down and calculate what you normally spend on food each week or month. Now realistically decide how much you can afford to add to that budget. Can you skip a movie rental or a trip to get fast food? When a disaster strikes and the grocery shelves are empty or your bank account is empty, you are going to kick yourself over and over if you didn’t give up a few luxuries now for peace of mind later.
3) Time to get out that binder. Sit down with your family and make a list of their favorite meals, about 10. Now make a list of their favorite desserts. Once this is done use this list to create a master list of all the ingredients in each recipe. For example if you have rice in a recipe write it down. The next time rice appears in a recipe make a hash mark next to rice. When you are finished you will be able to determine if your family likes rice or pasta the most. When we begin purchasing grains you will then know to purchase more of the one your family likes best. There is no magic to wheat or rice or oatmeal. The important thing is to have healthy grains stored that are versatle and provide good nutrition. If you have my ebook, Mother Hubbard: What She’s Doing Now you can find out exactly the amount you need to store, however, you alone will determine the exact foods which will achieve that goal. We’ll get more specific as we go along.
4) Using your permanent marker go to your pantry and make a slash mark across all the cans and boxes you currently have. These are the foods you will use first when preparing meals. More on that later.
5) Finally, using your marker date items around the house that are not single use. If the item is already open draw a line at the level of the contents on the outside of the container and date it. Now, when you use up that item you will know how long it took you to finish the bottle and you will know how much you need to purchase to have a three month supply. Mark both food and non food essentials. Some items to get you started: oil, shortening, pancake syrup, salad dressing, ketchup, toothpaste, deodorant, dish detergent, laundry detergent, hand lotion, shampoo, etc. To determine how much TP and hand soap you will need simply save the wrappers in a drawer for a month and count them at the end of the month. I have found this to be the best way to determine what you really need. I have heard some lecture and advise their audience to guesstimate how much they will need. Why guess when you can know? I have also never…met a family who needs to store as much oil as food storage calculators normally advise. Why waste your money stocking up on too much of an item when that money could have been spent to purchase things you really do need? Can you tell this is a frustration to me? I hate wasting anything, but especially money!
That should keep you busy for the week. If you have any questions please ask and please let us know how it is going. Remember every comment enters you into our February Give Away.
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What a great way to think of it: a General Store at home! I love that. I already have a 3 month menu done, now I need to calculate the ingredients and see what I need to buy to complete my food storage. I like your ideas on how to know what you really need for items – thanks for the tips!
In addition to marking the date on which I open an item, I keep a worksheet where I enter the item, date opened, size, date finished and any other pertinent info–for example, did something unusual happen that caused us to go through it especially quickly.
You do have the best ideas! Marking where the level is on the item and dating it is a good way to not have to wait until you get a new bottle. Very smart! I, too, get irritated with the use of food calculators that give you a general number. It’s better to just watch how you eat and plan accordingly. Thanks for a fantastic site!
nice, well written
you make some excellent points, something for me to think about
I do make an effort to store the amounts of fats shown in food calculators. My thought in preparing has been to pay attention to what situations others have experienced in real life and that have had a bearing on what they found to be truly valuable.
The June 1982 Ensign has an article by Elder F. Enzio Busche, of the First Quorum of Seventy. This is the link to the article:
http://lds.org/ldsorg/v/index.jsp?vgnextoid=2354fccf2b7db010VgnVCM1000004d82620aRCRD&locale=0&sourceId=f614aeca0ea6b010VgnVCM1000004d82620a____&hideNav=1
Elder Busche joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an adult but lived during and after World War II as a child in Germany. I quote from his article:
“Frequently I am asked, “What were the most valuable items in the days of starvation in Germany?”…As for what we needed, the food item we relied on most was vegetable oil. With a bottle of vegetable oil, one could acquire nearly every other desirable item. It had such value that with a quart of vegetable oil one could probably trade for three bushels of apples or three hundred pounds of potatoes. Vegetable oil has a high calorie content, is easy to transport, and in cooking can give a tasty flavor to all kinds of food items that one would not normally consider as food—wild flowers, wild plants, and roots from shrubs and trees. For me and my family, a high-quality vegetable oil has the highest priority in our food storage, both in times of daily use and for emergency usage. When vegetable oil is well-packed and stored appropriately, it has a long storage life without the necessity of refrigeration. We found ours to be in very good condition after twenty years of storage, but circumstances may vary in different countries and with different supplies.”
The question I asked myself and talked over with my mother in 1982 after I read Elder Busche’s article was, “Why was oil so important during this time of famine after the war?”
My mother’s comment was enlightening, “Every nation has its fry bread.” My mother had a large family and baked her own bread. She realized, however, that in famine conditions, cooking fuel is also scarce. That is why cooking oil and other fats are treasured commodities. You can fry pieces of bread dough and stir fry meat more quickly and with less fuel than you can bake them or even boil them. When fuel is really scarce, oil would be much more valuable.
Many of us have lived our entire lives without conditions being such that we have had to worry about such extreme conditions as many Europeans did after World War II. Some of them experienced blindness caused by not having enough fat in their bodies–fat enough so that the fat soluble vitamins we all need to maintain eyesight could be processed by their bodies.
Think about all the ways people fry bread. You might come up with a lot that you already do or enjoy yourself.
Save the TP wrappers! Genius! Seriously, this particular item seems to disappear at an alarming rate, and I’m always guessing at how much to buy for a year. Thank you for this bit of wisdom.
I’ve got my binder going–bring on the homework. You know what President Hinckley says: “the best storehouse is the family storeroom.”
This is so much more practical than alot of the food storage guides out there. I have alot of work to do this week to get it all figured out, but it will be worth it! Thanks for the advice!
I just found your blog. I love the idea of a General Store in your home!
I love your idea of drawing a line and dating items that you’ve already opened. I’ve been trying to figure out how to calculate how much of several baking-type supplies that we will need, knowing that the stuff I’ve had has been around for a while.
I have a general store in my house and LOVE it! But of course, I need to always be adding to it, so I’m happy to follow along with your blog.
I’ve been wondering how to figure out how much TP we use- save the rolls for a month! That’s fabulous! Thank you for answering the question in my head