Food Storage and Food Rotation
First, a quick note on what foods to store; we will go more in depth later.
Freeze dried foods are great long-term foods with #10 cans safely storing up to 25 years but you will generally pay a high price, putting it out of range for many families, especially large ones. A one year supply of #10 can meals will cost nearly $2,000 per person. MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat) will store for over six years if kept at 80 degrees F (and longer if kept at a lower temperature), but they can be pricey as well at around $70 per case (12 meals). It would cost over $2,700 a month for our family of eight to eat two meals per day. Granted, in an emergency situation you conserve what you have and ration your food and water. However, please remember that you will also be burning more calories in this type of situation and will need to replenish your strength to function optimally.
So how does the penny-pinching family conquer this important task of food storage and rotation? Let’s consider another option. Primarily by stocking, storing and rotating those foods that you already enjoy to eat. Here is a basic run-down:
What to store:
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- Store bought can foods
- Home-canned from garden
- Grains
- Water
- Powdered milk
- Sweeteners
- Cooking catalysts
Where to store:
Spread out your stock and (at risk of sounding paranoid) don’t readily tell all your neighbors (or your younger children with loose lips:)) of your great stocks of food. When folks get desperate they do things they normally would not; keep your lips tight - protect your family.
- Build a box frame for under beds for longer term storage items
- Under pier and beam house (especially those with a concrete footing so it looks like a foundation house from the street)
- Root cellar
- 55 gal barrel buried in the back yard (poor man’s root cellar)
- etc, etc, etc…Be creative with your property
How to store/rotate:
When simply buying larger portions of what we already eat and enjoy, we want to ensure proper rotation so our supply stays fresh. Those items with the shortest shelf life need to be readily accessible, preferably close to the kitchen. Purchased rotation systems will cost from $60 for a single drawer rotation to over $700 for a two mega shelving system. These are great if you have the funds. If not, you can custom build one for your unique space with a little ingenuity. A simple system such as this will keep your canned foods current.
This home-grown food storage and rotation system must be built of strong/solid materials to hold the weight of the canned food. A one-inch drop in 24” of length is sufficient to get the goods rolling. A section of quarter round trim will keep the cans in place and some wood stain will finish it out unless you want to get fancy. This system can be altered for use in a cabinet, one shelf space, pantry, root cellar or under the house.
Instead of searching all over the net for food storage supplies, check out Store It Foods.com. Make your own juice. Grow your own sprouts. Do your own canning and dehydrating. Assemble your own 72 hour kit. They provide tools, tips, gear and specialty appliances to help meet your food storage, food processing, and emergency preparedness needs.
Special notes:
- Boldly marking your boxes, cans, bottles, etc with the date of purchase or expiration date will help quickly ID and use the appropriate foods first.
- You will want to mark the top the cans with the expiration date and type of food with a sharpie permanent marker especially if you are in a humid climate. This is a lesson we learned while living on our sailboat for many years. It can be a bit adventurous to look into your cabinet and see a bunch of shiny metal cans and have no idea what they are as all the labels are in a pile on the floor.
- Consider buying a quality vacuum sealer to keep foods fresh until used.
