How To Stockpile Food
Keeping extra pantry basics in your home is like insurance. It’s there for use when you need it, but even better (and definitely not like insurance), when you use it, you are using the healthiest, most basic food that can be used to make all kinds of delicious meals.
It can be a little tricky to know where to start and how much to buy, where to put it, how to use it. But don’t worry, I’m going to go over all that!
First lets go over what you should store.
Dry goods are easiest to keep and store for the long term. Some items that fall into that category are wheat, beans, rice, sugar, oats, popcorn, and dry milk. When stored properly, these foods can last up to 20 years! However, if you’re going to go to all the trouble topurchase and store it, I would suggest that you use it! Yes, it takes a little more work to cook from scratch. Yes, you will still pack it like your going to store it for 20 years, but using food storage for your daily meals not only makes financial sense, it makes health sense. Whole foods in all their basic goodness are going to be far more nutritious than anything premade at the store. This is worth the effort.
Now, how much should you buy.
Buying in bulk is the cheapest way to build a stockpile of food. Bulk food usually comes in bags of 25 or 50 pounds. So we are going to work off of those numbers.
The next thing you need to know:
How many people you are storing food for and,
How many months of storage you want to buy for.
My thoughts on how much to store is that it’s best to start small and grow from there. It’s quite overwhelming to purchase and put together a full year of food storage. 3 months is an acheiveable goal and I suggest you start there! This will give you plenty of food and plenty of chances to go through the process and figure out what works best for you.
So now that you know how many people and how many months of storage you want. You need to calculate how much of each item you are storing you will need. There are food storage calculators all over the internet, but I really like mine because you can more finely adjust it to your needs. Go here if you want to get a free version of my food storage calculator.
Now you need to enter the numbers into that calculator and it will spit out all the amounts you will need, including calculating what you already have, and you are ready for the next step…shopping!
I order almost all my food storage from Azure Standard. If you’ve never heard of them, you can go here for a long review and how they work. But the short story is they are a direct-to-consumer organic food company. They grow their own food in Oregon and deliver it via semi-truck all over America. They also source organic food from other farmers and deliver direct to us. I only buy organic food storage, and Azure provides the best quality bulk organic food storage! Check out their website here to browse what they have available.
I’ll make a new post about my favorite items from Azure and how it works and will link it here. Other places you can check for bulk food is Winco if you have one close by or Costco. I buy my white rice and white flour from Costco because it is the cheapest. Winco doesn’t carry much organic bulk food but they do have a lot of non-organic.
Now, how are we going to store all that food so it is well preserved? This is the fun part. Your going to need 5 gallon buckets, oxygen absorbers, and a lid for the bucket. You’ll also need a hammer. When you purchase buckets, you’ll want food grade buckets and they need to be completely opaque. You don’t want light to come through them which can reduce the shelf life of your food. Another option if you can only find see through buckets is to purchase mylar bags to put into the buckets, put the food in there, seal them up, then seal up the bucket.
There is some debate on the internet about whether you should always use mylar bags with your five gallon buckets and there are some die hards that say that it is the only way to store food, but I’ve never used mylar with my buckets and my food is just fine. I really am not planning on the food sitting for more than 5 years. I use it and replenish it regularly. That is the goal. To get your food storage and then forget about it is missing half the point. Cooking from scratch with basic foods is the healthiest way to eat!
Once you get your buckets, pour the food into the buckets along with oxygen absorbers for each bucket. I use 100cc oxygen absorbers like these and throw in about 5 per bucket. If I have a helper, I’ll have them toss in one packet at time as I’m pouring so the oxygen absorbers get dispersed through out the bucket. Or if I don’t have a helper, I stop pouring when it’s half full and put in a few then pour in the rest and put a few on the top. If you do more than one bucket at a time, go quick because the oxygen packets starts to absorb the moment they touch the air. So open the bag of absorbers at the last possible moment, then pour everything in and get the lids on. If you have leftover absorbers, put them in a glass canning jar…the smallest they will fit in and put a lid on it and tighten it. The absorbers will take in all the oxygen in that jar and seal it up so no more oxygen gets in, perserving the absorbers for next time.
Now for the lids. This is where the hammer comes into use. Some people will use a rubber mallet but I don’t have one so I just hammer it on. The easiest way to get the lid to stay on is to hammer in one spot, then turn the bucket and hammer down on the opposite side. Then turn it to the next open spot and hammer there until it’s all in place. Sometimes if you just go in a circle, the lid won’t stay down and it’s hard to get it to seal.
Over the next hour or so, the oxygen absorbers will absorb all the oxygen in the bucket and it’s ready for long term storage! Now you need to find a place to store it. I have mine in bedroom closets, hall closets, as a base for a table, and some of it is just sitting out, waiting for me to find a place for it. Get creative! Keeping it in the garage is not the best option as the temperatures fluctuate too much so find somewhere inside. Also try to keep it out of direct sunlight if you are storing it in a room with a window.
That’s it! The best thing to do with food storage is to just get started. Pick one item to start with and then when that is done, pick the next. I always like to start with wheat and get enough for three months, then I move on to the next item. Steady is the key to getting food storage put together. You don’t need to do it all at once but working on it regularly will pay off sooner than you think! Good luck! It’s worth it!
