Family food storage basics

You never realize how necessary a food storage is, until you find yourself in a situation where you actually need it. Whether a storm has made it impossible to leave your home, or you’re in a financial situation where buying weekly groceries is a struggle, having food storage can be what saves you from a bad situation. A lot of people don’t know where to start, what to buy, or how on earth they should store their food. Here are a few tips to take control of your future and start your food storage today.

Put your pantry to use

If you have a pantry, this should be the first place you utilize for your food storage. Food storage is made up of non-perishable foods. Canned goods and dried foods are the perfect food storage items. Instant food items, that only require water to be ready to eat, are another perfect food storage option. If you have any spare room in your pantry, try reorganizing what you currently have and have a portion of your pantry dedicated to food storage and the other portion dedicated to your everyday food items that will be eaten much quicker.

 

Get creative

There are a lot of places in your home where you have unused storage space, that you probably don’t realize. You probably don’t think you have very much space, but there is unused potential space in even the most cramped home.

 

Kitchen  

• Check for empty space in and above cabinets
• Add shelving to deeper cabinets
• Use extra space above the fridge or stove
• Add shelves under your sink

 

Closets  

• Add shelves, or clear items off of existing shelves
• Hang pockets on the outside of doors
• Stack boxes at the end and bottom of closets

 

Bedroom  

• Use under bed containers to store food storage
• Stack buckets of bulk food behind your headboard
• Instead of a nightstand, make a stack of food boxes and then cover with a sheet or tablecloth
• Use a crate as a nightstand, and fill the crate with food storage

 

Laundry room and garages  

• Above your washer and dryer, you can add shelving or stack things on top of the actual washer and dryer
• Add shelving in your garage and stack food storage from floor to ceiling
• Suspend shelves from garage ceilings

 

How to keep track of your food storage

Once you have food storage, it can be hard to keep track of it. Especially if you’ve had to find creative places in multiple different rooms of your house to store your food, it can be hard to remember where everything is. Have you ever sworn you had a can of pineapple in the back of your cupboard but then you can’t find it after you’re home from the store? To avoid having no idea what food you actually have stored, you can implement a system to keep track of where everything is. An easy way to do this, is to write a list of everything that is one space, and tape it to the back of the door or place it in an accessible place nearby. You can also add labels to individual shelves to keep track of where specific things are. This is especially helpful if there are a lot of different items in one area, like in a pantry or garage. You can keep track of everything in a document on your phone or computer, or keep a planner that lists the different items in each different room.

 

Once you’ve found a system to keep track of your food storage that works for you, it’s important to make sure that you update your lists and systems as you use your food storage. Cross out items that you’ve used so your system isn’t outdated, and you don’t think you have something that you really don’t. Keeping track of your food storage is almost as important as actually having the food storage. It’s just way too easy to store something in an out of the way corner of your home, and then forget about it until long after its expiration date.