Get Organized: The 3 Month Food Storage Plan

Okay, I realized now that I am too impatient to focus on just one goal at a time, so I think I'll focus on bits of each goal and share as I accomplish them. I know. I am ADD. Sorry. Anyway...

Oh my word does food storage intimidate me. I know we have been counseled to prepare for a rainy day (figuratively AND literally) by everyone and their mom (if by "their mom" I mean church leaders and FEMA) but hi, I can barely think of something to eat for one night, so THREE MONTHS OF ENTIRE DAYS? Yeah, I don't think so.

Then for our anniversary, we went to see Contagion (so romantic, I know--we felt so germaphobic while watching it that we didn't even hold hands! haha) and there was a scene where FEMA ran out of food to distribute and everyone went crazy.

And I just thought... Well. Maybe we should have some food storage, because it looks like FEMA might not have that handled for me for some reason.

(And for the record, we did go out to a nice romantic dinner beforehand, just so you're not worried about our marriage or anything.)

The Strategy


We are picky eaters. We are also on a super tight budget. So I didn't want to just buy a bunch of random stuff we'd never eat, like random cans of chili or what have you, because (1) I didn't want us to hate eating our food storage and (2) I wanted most of it to be able to rotate through our normal meals.

For some reason when I sat down to finally make my meal and shopping list Saturday morning, it seemed easy. I just did two things:

1. Made a one-month menu of meals we regularly eat, following the example of a friend-of-a-friend. Some of the meals were repeated more than once (for example, pasta + veggies is one of our staple meals, and we don't mind eating it every week, so I put it on there four times).
2. Used an auto-populate spreadsheet from Food Storage Made Easy. I just put in the meal and the amount of each ingredient it would need for a month, and it calculated what I would need for 3 months.

I tried to choose meals that had mostly shelf-stable or freezable ingredients. For example, I had a lot of things that required canned corn or black beans, and things I could freeze like shredded cheese or chicken breasts. I tried to avoid eggs or milk or anything else perishable (that I wouldn't have freezer space for), though I do plan on some powdered or boxed versions of each of those just in case.

HOT TIP: If you're looking for recipes that don't require those perishables like butter, eggs, etc. try googling "vegan" + whatever recipe you are looking for. I found some great muffin & cookie recipe ideas for my food storage this way!

Anyway, I have my list now, so once I print it out I can start adding things to my weekly shopping trips. I'm actually kind of excited! :)