Does Food Storage Pay Off? Yes it does!

As you may know hubby has recently lost his job and we have struggled to find a new one locally.  Interesting times for those of us living paycheck to paycheck!  But at least I have one thing I don't need to worry about and that's food!  Nothing makes you feel worse than having to choose between food or electricity.

We have taken food storage very seriously ever since the crises of 2008 when the falling economy made my husbands job disappear.  It was not a fun year and we had some big revelations.  So now I have supplies of all the staples we use.  Every year I can a years supply of fruit for us to have every day and I also bought a huge supply of mandarin oranges and pears (which I couldn't find free for canning), all the fruit I can I either get free or very cheap.  We still have about 15 cans peaches, 6 cans apples sauce, 10 cans cherries, 15 cans pears, and 7 cans mandarin oranges to last us.  Cherry canning season is almost here so I will soon be replenishing our canned cherries.  We eat fruit at every dinner so I need allot of canned fruit to get us through a full year.

We have also taken food security further by having laying hens, meat rabbits, planting fruit trees and berries, and having a huge garden every year. I want to have our own fruit for canning so I don't have to ask other people for their unused produce.       I don't ever buy eggs and if we needed to we could survive just on the protein from our eggs, and the occasional rabbit.

But my big feeling of security comes from having a well stocked basement full of foods to get us through hard times.  We have built it up slowly, we can't afford those expensive dehydrated food packages.  Anyone can do what we do. I buy most of my foods in the bulk departments of WINCO.

The things I have stocked for emergencies?  Rice, flour, sugars, salt, cooking oils and fats, leavening agents, canned milk, coffee, tea, noodles, beans, cocoa mix, spices, drink mixes, canned veggies/meats/fruits/dinners, medical supplies and medications, toiletries, etc.

The thing about this is that all the above food we actually use on a daily basis.  These items will not just sit down there until they expire, I cycle them all the time.  That's really what people should do when buying food storage. You need to be able to eat your food and enjoy it.  But I do know from looking at prices that the food I have bought a year or two ago has gone up at least 25% and upwards of 100% in some cases.  That is money saved in my opinion.