My Grammie asked me about the shape of my pantry last week.  I said it was fine because it is full.  That’s what I thought anyway, until I got home and took a good look at the pantry.  It is full of things I got with great coupon plus sale deals, but that mostly is comprised of condiments, laundry supplies, and cooking soups.  Uh oh.

I stared at my pantry and wondered how long we could live out of our pantry if we had to.  The bleak answer that struck me was, “Not very long.” 

Is Your Pantry Ready?

Are you prepared with a well-stocked pantry should the unexpected happen, like a job layoff, a natural disaster, or something similar?  Some of the supplies listed below aren’t food items, but are necessary for cooking, eating, and everyday living, especially during an emergency.  When stocking up your pantry, make sure you’re prepared for any of the following situations with the items listed below.

Baby

If you have a baby, it can be hard to substitute certain items if you run out and can’t buy more.  Do you have enough:

• Disposable Diapers (even if you normally cloth diaper, a loss of water may mean you can’t wash diapers)
• Formula
• Diaper rash medicine
• Baby cereal and baby food

Loss of Water 

In case you should lose your access to running water, you’ll need items to take the place of the many daily uses of water.

• Bottles or jugs of water for drinking.  Learn about purifying and storing clean water safely here in this document prepared by the Alabama Cooperative Extension System.
• Alcohol-based hand sanitizers and wet wipes for eliminating germs and cleaning.
• Wet wipes for using after going to the bathroom.
• Rubbing alcohol and cotton balls for washing hair without water.
• Bottled juices or juice boxes (not concentrate) that are ready to drink.
• Pedialyte and Gatorade to treat and prevent dehydration.
• Paper plates, plastic forks and spoons, and plastic cups that don’t require washing.

Loss of Electricity

If you should lose power, you’ll need foods that can be eaten without cooking.  You’ll eat the foods out of the refrigerator and freezer first as much as possible to avoid spoiling.  Supplies to use for cooking outdoors are a good idea.

Cooking supplies:

• Extra propane tank for bbq grill.
• Aluminum foil to line the bbq with, so that you can cook foods (like frying eggs) that wouldn’t normally go on the grill.  You may be cooking a lot on the barbecue, so make sure you have several rolls.
• Camping stove.
• Hand can opener that requires no electricity.

Other:

• Canned meats that are pre-cooked.  Spam, tuna, canned chicken, vienna sausages, and deviled ham are good examples of canned meats that are ready to eat right out of the package.  These can easily be warmed up over a fire or camping stove.
• Powdered or dried milk.
• Canned soups, pastas, bacon, stews, canned chow mein (includes pre-cooked meat).

General / Loss of Transportation/Shipping Methods

Loss of transportation and shipping methods is an important emergency preparedness issue for my family in Alaska, since we are remotely located from major food suppliers.  If an emergency was to happen cutting off our grocery stores from their regular shipments, we’d need to be stocked up on non-perishable foods (similar to what food banks stockpile).  These reserves would keep us going until grocery stores could get replenishments of fresh foods.

This is an important consideration if you live far from a major city, in a remote area, or on an island.

• Canned veggies, fruits, meats, soups, pastas, juices, and beans.
• Frozen vegetables and berries, meats, roasts, lunch meats, frozen loaves of bread.
• Baking staples such as flour, sugar, yeast, corn meal, baking soda, baking powder, oil.
• Baking mix (Bisquick).
• Boxed all-in-one dinners that contain canned meat.
• Grains to add to dinners or cook as hot breakfasts (oats, barley, wheat berries, etc.)
• Protein substitutes like protein powder, TVP, and TSP.
• Rice, dried pasta and dried beans.
• Vitamins and supplements.
• Over the counter medicines and first aid supplies.
• Toilet paper.
• Contact solution, spare contacts.
• Toothpaste, floss and fluoride.
• Shampoo, conditioner, soap.
• Detergents and cleaning supplies.
• All the items in the lists above.

Act Now to Stock Up a Little at a Time

Emergency preparedness is not something to do later.  The best time is now!  Be sure to print out this article and tuck these reminder checklists into your pantry.  Each time you go grocery shopping, add a few of the items above to your list to stock up. 

By stocking up a little at a time for an unexpected emergency, you’ll be ready for anything that life throws your way and will have peace of mind knowing that your family will be alright.

If you found this article useful, please blog about it for your readers or share it on a forum.  Here is the URL to link to:  http://www.homemakerbarbi.com/emergency-preparedness-for-the-pantry-checklists . Thank you!

Related Articles:

• Printables: The Prescription History List Form
• Printable: Kids’ Getting Dressed to Leave the House Checklist
• Printable Housekeeping Cleaning Checklist: Kitchen
• Printable Housekeeping Checklists: Bathroom
• How to Use up Food in a Pantry Stockpile

Pantry stockpiles are the best- especially when they’re filled with free and nearly-free food.  I have to admit I get a strange happiness out of being resourceful, and watching my grocery bill dwindle as I fill up the pantry makes me ecstatic.  However – this month I spent only $20 on groceries for an ENTIRE MONTH, which makes me even more ecstatic!  Want to know how? Keep reading.

Like many frugal homemakers, I use coupons and combine them with items on sale to buy them for $0 or almost nothing.  Sometimes, there are just too many good deals. Then the unthinkable happens – *gasp* – you run out of room to store your free food!

Of course, this doesn’t apply only to food.  Stockpiles for household goods and other products can expand as well.  Are you nodding your head?  Example: I haven’t bought toothpaste since June 2008 (yes, that’s 9 months ago) and I STILL have unopened packages.  I got so many toothpaste samples, then purchased tons for 20 cents a tube, that I thought I’d never need to buy toothpaste again.  My storage area was overflowing – a little too overflowing.

At a certain point, you have to stop stockpiling, no matter how good the deals, and make a determined vow to use up the food in your pantry stockpile.  This is exactly what I’m doing right now.

How Do You Use Up a Stockpile?

When my husband and I were hardcore into frugal grocery (we’ve been a bit more lax lately), I would make a game out of seeing how long I could go without going to the grocery store.  The goal is to use up the food you have in your cupboards, freezer, pantry, cabinets, etc. as much as possible.  (Not expired foods! Please, if they’re past their prime, just trash them and vow to do better at watching expiration dates in the future.)

• Take everything out of the cabinets.  Foods get pushed to the back, hide behind bigger packages, and attempt to disguise themselves in the shadows to avoid being consumed.  Don’t let the food pull one over on you!  Pull out all items from cabinets, shelves, lazy Susans, and put them out on a table or countertop.
• Take inventory of your food.  Make a list of what ingredients you have and the quantity of each, then put them away.
• Put the food away in reverse order.  You know the drill, newest foods in the back, oldest foods in the front.  The strategy is to use the oldest food up first, before it expires.
• Make a menu plan without looking at anything in the kitchen.  You’ve already seen all the food, so you should have a pretty good idea of what’s in there.  This is the point where you use your inventory papers and plan meals to use up those specific ingredients.  Plan your menu, day by day, by writing down a meal then crossing off the ingredients it will use.
• Don’t buy any more food!  Try to not purchase anything from the grocery store except for perishable items that you need for the week (milk, produce, baby supplies, etc.- you need those).

Keep in mind that while you are in the using-it-up phase, you’ll probably be using the same inventory sheet for more than one week’s worth of meal planning.  Just keep crossing food off as you use it up.  When planning your meals, don’t think about what sounds good for dinner. Instead, think of what meals can be made with the ingredients you are trying to use.  A free tool I use to help with this is Recipe Matcher; you type in the ingredients you want to use up and it gives you recipes that use those ingredients.

Huge Savings

Use it Up phase around my house forces me to get more creative with the foods I’m cooking, and really challenges me to stick to the menu plan.  The benefits are many: 

• Older foods get eaten because they’re not being pushed to the back of the cabinet by new groceries.
• You’ll clear out little-used foods and know not to buy them again, even if there’s a really good sale.
• You’ll spend next to NOTHING on groceries during this time, since you’re using food you’ve already paid for (in some cases a long, long time ago!).
• You get a clean kitchen and pantry with lots of room so you can start bargain hunting again.  What’s not to love?!

I have been using up my stockpile for close to 3 weeks now, and during that time have spent only $20 on milk, fruits and veggies.  There are still about 3 weeks to go in my case, so I’ll be steadfast in my goal to use up the stockpile.  You can do the challenge right along with me and cut down your spending as you Use It Up!  In the meantime, are any of you using up your pantry contents?  Do you periodically go on a grocery shopping fast? Let us know your methods in the comments. 

Do you like our kitchen tips?  Support our site so we can bring you more free home and how to articles.  Check out Kitchen Tip Tuesday and Homemaker Mondays at 11^th Heaven.

Pantry photo by evelynishere.

Related Articles:

• Frugalize Your Pantry with Bulk Storage
• Frugal Blunder: We Shopped For Bulk Food Storage Without Researching!
• Milk Jug Uses In My Kitchen Right Now
• Kitchen Tip: How to Store Marshmallows
• Kitchen Tip: Date Your Pantry Items with Marker

Use the Top 8 Frugal Cooking Ingredients to identify some frugal staples you can add to your diet. Overlapping these ingredients in many of your meals will allow you to purchase a few ingredients in large quantities that can be frequently used in your menu. The fewer ingredients you have to purchase, maintain and store, the better for your bottom line.

Rice was our first bulk purchase because we use a lot of it in our cooking. Versatility makes rice a very frugal cooking ingredient. Use it as a side or mix it into main dishes for extra filling. It cooks well in the crockpot, in a steam cooker, on the stove top, and even bakes well in the oven. At our grocery store, the largest bag of rice costs $1.03 per pound. At Sam’s Club, my husband was able to get a 50 pound bag of rice for only $15! That means for the same rice, we paid 30 cents per pound instead of $1.03! For the same amount of rice we would have purchased (over time) from our grocer, we saved $36.50.

Investing in proper storage containers also needs to be a consideration. Keep in mind, though, that the money you invest in these containers will only be spent once. Buying in bulk will save you much more money than the initial investment in the containers. (Don’t commit the same frugal blunder we did! Learn about storing bulk foods before you make any purchases!)

This great guide to food storage from North Dakota State University Agriculture provides storage charts for almost every food imaginable and timelines for how long each food will keep.

What other dry foods can be purchased in bulk to drive down the cost of stocking your pantry?

Grains: barley, wheat berries, quinoa, white rice, brown rice, oats

Pasta: spaghetti, macaroni, egg noodles

Beans: lentils, pinto, black, great northern, small white, red, kidney

Miscellaneous: coffee (you may be able to buy directly from a local roaster at significantly reduced prices), flour, sugar, popcorn, baking powder, baking soda, grits, dry milk, artificial sweeteners (Splenda)

Frugal Challenge: Add one new bulk food and corresponding storage containers to your pantry each time you grocery shop. One at a time helps keep the cost of buying the containers manageable. Watch your pantry level increase and your grocery bill decrease, since you’ll now be able to buy more food for less!

Related Articles:

• Frugal Blunder: We Shopped For Bulk Food Storage Without Researching!
• How to Use up Food in a Pantry Stockpile
• Unexpected Guests? How to Stretch a Meal at the Last Minute
• Top 8 Frugal Cooking Ingredients
• The Donation Station

Related Articles:

• Frugalize Your Pantry with Bulk Storage
• How to Use up Food in a Pantry Stockpile
• Unexpected Guests? How to Stretch a Meal at the Last Minute
• Top 8 Frugal Cooking Ingredients
• The Donation Station