Lds Food Storage Amount

Food Storage – Explained

October 28, 2009 > 26 Comments

While I am not one to preach gloom and doom, I do think it is a good idea to be prepared in this economy. When I realized I had a reader who stockpiled I begged asked Keeley to write a guest post on the topic. If you think about it, stockpiling was a way of life 100 years ago. People planted in the spring, harvested and preserved in the summer and fall in order to store up for the winter. With the convenience of supermarkets on every corner, stockpiling is unfamiliar to many people today. Keeley does a great job of explaining and encouraging us to start this old tradition again.

Keeley Brooks is the child of English army parents who converted to Americanism several years after she married her CA native husband.  She has three children who are all pretty much as nutty as she is.  At this moment in time they are gleefully taking pictures of a tie-bedecked dog.  Keeley does not know why, but she is grateful for the gentle nature of said dog.  Food storage is one of her numerous obsessions, along with cloth diapers, running, homeschooling and sushi.  She has a blog of meandering thoughts of interest to no-one in particular.  She no longer lives in Michigan, and finds it a tragedy that no-one has yet invented a usable transporter.

Store what you eat. Eat what you store.

What on earth is food storage?

Food storage is basically pantry living. You gather supplies that will last a certain period of time and store them in your home rather than pop over to the store every week – or several times a week. This may sound funky – and in some countries, believe it or not, it’s illegal – it actually brings amazing peace of mind. You know that, come what may, you have the supplies on hand to feed your family.

Why would I want to store food?

There are as many reasons as there are people. Perhaps your church recommends it. Perhaps your husband works on commission and you can’t count on a certain amount of money each month. Perhaps your husband works in a volatile industry and you may be out of work for several months at a time. Perhaps you simply like to be prepared. Whatever the reason, food storage = peace of mind. And a full stomach.

How much do I store?

It depends. I’d shoot for a year’s food storage, but frankly, every little bit helps. Just remember: Store what you eat. Eat what you store. Rotate, rotate, rotate. And don’t be like me and get all excited because you finally have a complete year’s food storage – then eat it and forget to replace it so you’re back where you started. *sigh*.

What do I store?

There are so many food storage plans out there you could easily find one that works for you. For beginners, I recommend making a weekly menu and shopping list. On the list, write down *everything* you need for that menu, including the stuff you already have in-house. Keep this list in a binder set aside for food-storage record keeping. After three months of doing this – Voila! Three months of data on the food you family actually eats and the supplies needed to feed them. If you rotate through this menu four times – Voila! One year of data on the food your family actually eats and the supplies needed to feed them.

How do I afford this?

Let’s assume you’re rich and can afford to double your grocery budget each week. Then do that. Just buy double of what you were going to buy. In three months you’ll have three months of storage. In a year you’ll have a year’s worth of storage.

Presuming you can’t do that, =), you’ll need to carve some money out of your budget for food storage. Even a little bit helps. There’s even a plan that helps you pull together your food storage on $5 a week. You can find that here and discussions about it here and here.

You have your plan though – it’s right there on the menu and shopping list pages you put in your binder. Look at the amount of money you’re able to spend on food storage, then look at your shopping list for week one and say “I can afford these items this week”. After you’ve purchased the items, put a tick by them on the list. The next week look at the list again and decide what you’re going to buy. Before you know it your problem will not be “how can I afford this?” because it will simply be a part of your budget. Your problem will be “I’m running out of room! Where do I put all this stuff?”

Where do I store all this stuff?

If you have a child that just got married, send them all their stuff and use the room as storage. Okay, okay, not many people have that happen. And many live in tight living spaces. Presuming you can’t just move into a larger house that has a ready-made storage room for you, you have to find spaces in your house to store the food. You may:

• organize your pantry to free up some space
• go through your house and give away stuff you haven’t used for several years
• utilize the space under beds, using bed risers if need be
• store your towels in the bathroom rather than in the linen closet
• store sheets between the mattress and box spring rather than in the linen closet and voila! More space in your linen closet

Wherever you put your food storage I advise keeping all like-items together. For example, all the sugar under one bed, all the wheat under another etc. This enables you to quickly find what you need.

Wait! Some of this stuff is perishable! I can’t buy a year’s worth of lettuce and store it under the living room couch!

Convert fresh vegetables to canned if you can. For example, your weekly menu calls for carrots. Buy the fresh ones for eating right now and the canned ones for storage. If your family screams and runs away at the sight of canned carrots, keep that in mind and make a substitute. You know your family. Would they prefer a different canned vegetable, or can you purchase freeze dried vegetables? How about starting a garden? That’s a wholesome family activity there. You can then can your produce together. Do you know how to dry green beans? Snap the beans into the size you like, get a needle and thread and string ‘em up. Hang them somewhere to dry – et voila! Dried beans ready for the winter.

Where do I purchase this stuff?

Your local grocery store is great for purchasing foods that will last a short time ie under two years. However, if you’re looking for much longer-term storage, then look into something like Walton Feed or Emergency Essentials.

Long term storage?

Cans of carrots only last a certain time. This is great if you’re rotating through them. However, perhaps you’re interested in longer storage ie something that will last 30 years or more. Long-term food storage is good preparedness for extreme circumstances (ie, the unemployment lasts a year or more) where you need the basics; rice, wheat, corn, beans. At this point, a food storage calculator is what you need. You enter in the amount of people in your family, and it will let you know how much of which item to purchase.

Online Food Storage calculator

I found Food Storage made Easy whilst searching for a food calculator. It looks fabulous! Recipes and everything! This calculator is downloadable.

One last important item. Don’t forget toiletry supplies. You need a year’s worth of soap, too. And you would not BELIEVE how much toilet paper you can go through in one year. =)

Wishing you joy and peace of mind. Please feel free to ask questions in the comments.

“Many more people could ride out the storm-tossed waves in their economic lives if they had their . . . supply of food . . . and were debt-free. Today we find that many have followed this counsel in reverse: they have at least a year’s supply of debt and are food-free.”

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by JES

JES is a good friend of mine and a loyal reader of BCC.

We all know about that “righteous checklist” of yore. Marry young, have lots of kids, stay home with your children at all cost, plant a garden, grind wheat, make bread, sew your own clothes, be frugal, store dried beans, and do your family history. Fortunately we’re moving away from the idea that doing those things equals righteousness and that if you’re not doing those things you’re going straight to the Terrestial Kingdom. I think our church is becoming more tolerant and accepting of differences; that we each make our choices and that’s okay. But in the process, are we becoming less tolerant of those women who continue to choose to do those things on the “righteous checklist”?  Do you see the bland mother herding a bunch of kids down the hall at church and assume you know exactly which box you can stick her in?

Imagine you’ve just moved into a new ward and are scoping out the members there, hoping to find a new friend or two. You find out that there are only a couple women your age in the ward–namely Sister A and Sister B.

Sister A married at 20 and had her first child 10 1/2 months later. She now has 5 children and is a stay-at-home mom. She and her family drink powdered milk and she makes most of their bread, using freshly ground wheat. She plants a garden every year, bottles fruit and makes applesauce and jam each summer. She has a good amount of food storage and is actively working on storing more. She was excited when a friend gave her a pressure cooker so she could bottle vegetables and try cooking dried beans in a more efficient way.

Sister A loves to trade tips on getting good deals at stores, is grateful for hand-me-downs and makes-over old clothes into new (turning pants with holes into shorts, etc). She wears little to no make-up and rarely buys herself new clothes; trendy she is not. Other hobbies she has include quilting, sewing and scrapbooking. She’s also cross-stitched many of the temples her family members have married in. In learning about her family history, this friend has expressed her admiration for her great-great grandmother who was a 2nd wife in a polygamous marriage.

In addition to taking care of her large family, she is the Primary president and ardently advocates for the children in her ward. She has never tasted Coke or Pepsi. In her spare time, she enjoys reading. In fact, she read each book in the Twilight series within about 12 hours of checking them out from the library.

Sister B is a fledgling environmentalist. She recycles as much as possible, composts, and uses a rain barrel to water her garden. She plans on getting several more and linking them together in order to limit the run-off from her gutters. Sister B also enjoys home improvement and home maintenance projects. She’s fixed leaky toilets, replaced window moulding, re-screened doors, fixed broken door frames, replaced old weather-stripping, repaired a rather large hole in the wall and other miscellaneous tasks. She does scrapbook a little, but they are very minimalist. Stampin’ Up holds no attraction to her. Sister B also enjoys reading. After several people recommended the Twilight series to her, she read them and decided that they were a good, quick read but not the best books she’s ever read.

She’s also a bit of a know-it-all. She has an opinion on everything.  She earned a degree in History teaching with a minor in Math education, which plays to her love of teaching and being in front of a group of people. As part of her history major, she dabbled in Mormon history and enjoys discussing some of the more difficult aspects of it, such as polygamy.

She is registered as a Democrat, planned her pregnancies carefully and freely uses birth control. As a youth, she did not earn her Personal Progress award. She attends church, but her husband does not go with her. She currently has a calling in the Primary and finds it challenging and fulfilling, usually, but can’t help but look down the hallyway towards Gospel Doctrine and Relief Society and wonder what she’s missing.

What images do you have in your head as I describe these two women? Does one seem like the friend you’re looking for, while the other has some skills you’d like to learn but is probably one of “those” women that you’ve never really had a lot in common with? Do you assume the SAHM is firmly under the thumb of the LDS patriarchy and the other is a little bit more enlightened and open-minded? After learning the above details about someone, would you write one of them off, figuring that you already knew everything you needed to know about them; that they weren’t really “friend” material? Would it surprise you to learn that these women are actually different characterizations of the same person?

My friends would be able to guess that I was describing myself in the two characterizations. But, I sometimes feel as if people who don’t know me see the way I look, see the number of children I have, attend one of my bread-making demos and assume they know exactly why I do the things I do, when in reality, they might be surprised by some of my interests.

I love projects where there’s a tangible result that can be admired at the end–thus the quilting, scrapbooking, home repair, canning, etc. I do believe that the prophets have been inspired in their counsel to learn how to garden and use what’s produced. But I don’t have a garden out of duty. I love to be outside and “play in the dirt”, as my mother-in-law says. I give away most of what I grow in my garden because I really don’t like vegetables, although I’m working on learning to use them more. I also give away a lot of the jam that I make because I don’t like jam; it’s fun to make and other people love to eat it, so it’s a great gift at Christmas time. In addition to my joy in watching things grow and being outside, growing a garden and composting and using a rain barrel all fit into my desire to make better use of the world’s resources.

The reality of having a large family means that I do have to do things to be frugal. But, using secondhand clothes fits into my concern for the environment as well. I use powdered milk because it saves us $500/year, but it’s also a funny kind of luxury in that I don’t have to worry about dashing to the store for milk and bread if a storm is coming (and I’ve discovered a better-tasting powdered milk that is palatable to almost everyone). By storing food, it helps us out financially, and it’s convenient to have ingredients on hand when I haven’t planned well for meals. I love good bread and it felt like a real accomplishment when I finally learned how to make it. I’ve conquered homemade pizza as well (thanks Tracy M!) and that’s a big deal when you have 4 boys who will soon be eating us out of house and home. Frugality is a time suck and does limit some of the other things I can do, but we won’t always have children at home and someday I’ll be able to focus less on my children and more on other things.

People see that I’m highly invested in my Primary calling. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t enjoy another calling or that I don’t understand when Primary isn’t someone’s favorite calling in the world. This calling has been very rewarding at this time in my life and I mostly enjoy what I do, but Primary was never top on my list of callings I wanted. For some, Primary is a little bit of heaven. For others, Primary is a learning experience that you hope to leave behind you sooner rather than later. Everyone’s talents are different. Just because it’s my job right now to think of the children first, and I take that stewardship seriously, doesn’t mean that I adore being around little children and don’t have my own unofficial list of “coveted callings”.

As for the lack of Coke drinking, it might seem like I must be self-righteous because I haven’t ever had Coke or Pepsi, but it’s mostly because I hate any and all soda. I can tolerate fruit-flavored soda, but the carbonation still bothers me a lot. I do have a personal dislike of getting addicted to anything (except my Chapstick–that’s the first thing I’d miss if the world fell apart), but I have no problem with other people choosing to drink whatever kind of soda they want. Don’t judge my ice cream eating and I won’t judge your soda drinking.

So, why do we judge people spuriously, based on a few observations of the things they do and then we assume we know everything about them? Perhaps the SAHM who does all the “righteous” things is doing them not because she hasn’t figured out how to break the partriarchal mold, but maybe it’s because that’s where her talents and interests lie. That lady in the ward, that you’ve assumed is as conservative as the come, may have some interests that would surprise you if you got to know her.