Filling the Pantry

My project that I've taken on is the family's food provisions. September is Preparedness Month. Actually, I started this project in June.

This house has a 20'x25' pantry with two upright, 27 cu ft freezers plus an additional refrigerator/freezer in it. It was almost bare. I've having fun trying to fill it. I've laid in a couple months of paper goods like paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper. But things like Tampax, menstrual pads, urinary pads, and adults diapers are also stockpiled. Once again, couponing has saved my bank account as I squeeze pennies into dimes. In  fact the $5.00 a week I spend on Sunday papers (2) more than pays or itself in savings. A lot of weeks, I'm buying about $500+ of products for at most $75. My goal is not years or decades, but are least six months with to start with. I've reached my goal in laundry supplies and most of the nonfood goals.

I'm not ignoring the food stock either. Slowly, I've been getting this big city family's going out every other night to grab something to eat, or just buy what they need for a couple of meals at a time to a more home based eating routine. It's been difficult converting them over even with the COVID mess last year. Gone are the half eaten takeout containers to be replaced by real food. Granted some are leftover real food foe them to take for "lunches." It's so much better for them too. I'm not stuck cooking every night either, it's only 3 or 4 meals a week plus the stockpile.

For the stockpiling of food stuff, I'm consolidating what's here by looking before shopping. When I first got here and started cooking. I'd find three or four opened containers of the same thing plus two or three unopened containers in different cabinets and in the two kitchens (2 fully equipped kitchens and a partial outdoor one. Plus a small "snacks" one in the bar area). I wasn't really being nosy, but really?!  I'd be cooling or planning a meal and ask my daughter if she had a certain ingredient and she'd answer, "yeah, somewhere." Then, began a mad rush to find it. I found ingredients everywhere. I reorganized, consolidated, and redistributed all the food prep areas, It was back the way my son in law's grandmother had it. There had been too many cooks in the kitchen since she initially organized it. This also went a long way in filling up the master storeroom too.  I could see what we had and what to buy. It was much easier to keep inventory too. My inventory guidelines are simple. Open one, buy one once you've hit a baseline. To reach your baseline, it's need one buy two or three.

As far as food stuffs I've put by so far, I've canned 6 months worth of pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, French fries, hash browns (cottage fries), diced onions (dehydrated), garlic (dehydrated), ginger (dehydrated), and assorted commercially canned vegetables. What is lacking is meat. I still haven't found a cheaper alternative to the higher priced grocery option. Meat prices get higher and higher as weeks go by. Although I did lay in about 3 months of mylar packaged, commercial tuna from a killer sale (sale price - coupons=free) . If I'd had more coupons. I would have gone back got more. So the pantry isn't looking so bare anymore. It's a quarter of the way filled. Not too shoddy in a three month time frame. 

In case you were wondering, my cost of this stockpile was $581 (I budgeted $600 for groceries each month/$320 a month for household) out of $2,641 for grand total of a 80% savings. You can't tell me that combining sales and coupons doesn't work. And, none of the coupons were doubled, only stacked between rewards, rebate offers, store and manufacturer coupons. Total time spent compiling data necessary to do the deals about ten hours a week. Thank God for the internet and other crafty folks out there! Average number of stores visited and time spent shopping, about 2-3 stores and two hours a week in stores. I'm not a die hard couponer who goes to ten stores to get the deals, or buys unneeded stiff because I can get it for free, and hopefully resell or donate it. I probably would have saved more. LOL Remember, I'm a firm believer in...work smarter, not harder.

That makes sense and cenys.