Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Food Storage Analyzer

So, I've been trying to be good and think about food storage lately. I just kinda want to have something on hand for the "what if" moments, you know? But, I have to be honest. Food storage is kind of daunting to me. I mean, I have four kids, my husband, and myself. And our cat, of course. Can't forget her!

When you think about having to store food for that many people, it's kind of overwhelming! Just think about how much food we eat in one year!

Well, I'm trying to get better. But, the question is, how to start? There almost seems to be like three different schools of thought when it comes to food storage. There's the traditionalist that wants to have enough wheat on hand to last through the millenium. There's the minimalist that wants to have just three months supply of your basic canned foods. You know, the kind of stuff you use every day that is almost like an overflow of your pantry.

Then there's the extremist who focuses mostly on emergency supplies. Well, I guess extremist isn't the right word. Let's just say this is the one that always has a year's supply of toilet paper, bandaids, and tampons. Oh, and their 72-hour kits. Lots of those.

I'm trying to decide what kind of food storage person I want to be. I think the perfect method is to somehow combine all three. To be sure you have the stuff that's going to last you forever, to be sure you have your three month of things you use all the time, and to have all your extra emergency supplies. Oh, and let's not forget water storage.

Wow. I think I'm getting overwhelmed again.

But, there are a couple of great websites that I think will help get me started! One is called Food Storage Made Easy. I REALLY like how they lay everything out. They give you 10 Baby Steps to get you going. It definitely made it less scary for me.

One other website I love is called FoodStorageAnalyzer.com. I feel like this is the website for those of us that have started to build our food storages without really knowing what we were doing. They tell you all about what you have (with nutritional content) and where you're lacking. I've been entering everything I have in food storage into their system for the last little while and it's been fun to see the number of days go up saying how long we could last with our food storage. Sadly, we're only at 18.12 days so far, but I still haven't entered any of our wheat or dinner storage (I have all of mine organized based on meals for now). I think that's going to get us up to at least a month. Maybe?

Honestly, I do have a decent start. I have some beautiful shelves that we inherited when we bought our house. I have lots of grains and I know how to use them (VERY important when starting to think long term storage). And I'm adding a few things each time I go shopping.

How about you guys? How's your supply coming?