Comments on: Unstocking the pantry

By: theora55

theora55 — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 15:20:24 +0000

The food seems like it will get used, although that’s a lot of snack food, but the surplus of dishes, wrapping paper, and other sheer stuff was overwhelming. I like having enough food that I can go a week without a grocery visit, and am working on resisting sales when I have plenty of the item at home.

By: Deb in Portland OR

Deb in Portland OR — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 04:23:02 +0000

I do keep a well stocked pantry, approx 3 months worth of dry goods and other basics such as olive oil. I agree with musicdoc, and I believe that most families are very illprepared for possible disasters such as severe storms or several day power outages, etc. We’re not nutty survivalists, but we have made a conscientious decision to be more self sufficient.

We live in a rural area in a small town, approx 1 hr from the city. For us, it’s more cost effective to buy in bulk when we’re in Portland, then package the food into reusable food saver bags (important to label & date & rotate the food) and then store those bags in food grade buckets. However, we only stock up on items that we use regularly, and we don’t eat processed foods. We cook nearly everything from scratch. Having a well stocked pantry saves us an unplanned 15 minute drive into town for a single item.

There is definitely a difference in being well prepared and hoarding. I found that Heart 2 Heart pantry pics horrifying! Yes, it’s extremely well organized (hellloooo OCD), but how many linens, candles and ribbons does a family need?!

By: Julie

Julie — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 01:59:44 +0000

Wow; all I could think about as I scrolled through those pantry pictures was what clutter it was. CLUTTER ORGANIZED IS STILL CLUTTER!! I got the feeling that if she didn’t spend so much time organizing all the junk then she wouldn’t need a nanny. I’ve seen STORES that had less selection!

By: Bernice

Bernice — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 18:21:38 +0000

Why did you post this when us Canadians cant register for the pantry sites? It tells us our zip code is invalid. Boo hoo

By: MusicDoc

MusicDoc — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:17:16 +0000

I have been taught “Prepare ye every needful thing” which includes a years supply of the food, water and other items your family will need. In the past two or three years this has been whittled to 3 to 6 months (at a bare minimum to have 1 month’s worth) based on storage and monetary availability. We are also counseled not to go in debt for our food storage. This storage is not only for our benefit, but to help neighbors if necessary. I have made the mistake of not rotating my stock before and had to dispose of a great number of canned items. We now write the expiration on stuff in large print and try to place the items on the shelf according to which will expire first. I also had started a list of the contents of my “pantry,” but have to finish it. That will make shopping easier since I struggle to remember what is needed & what is not. (I make a list, but often forget it or don’t stick to it, but that’s another issue. ADHD)
I don’t have room in my kitchen for canned foods, multiple salad dressings/marinades, cooking oils, pasta, etc. We keep the extras on open shelves in the garage. I don’t have the years supply, but probably 3 months on most things. I also keep a large stock of paper goods because we use a lot of paper towels. (I recycle many things and try to be as “green” as possible, but hate germy sponges & dish cloths. Pre-moistened wipes are a waste os money.) Water is a big issue too. We had a water main break in front of our house and had issues for almost 10 days because the city couldn’t get their act together and the constant rain didn’t help. You never know what economic, natural or other strange disatster may hit your family so that you can’t run to the market every week. I prefer fresh, organic foods and produce too, but it’s nice to have the peice of mind that I have some back up. I’ve heard of too many stories of families that have had to live off of their food storage alone not to have it. The lady everyone is calling crazy, just may not be. She just might be totally following the counsel of church leaders – just maybe on the side of exact preciseness and she might have a huge family. Maybe they just love sardines too. We also keep an evacuation box (we live in hurricane country) filled with supplies for 72 hrs. This plus our camping gear ensures we have shelter, food, water, medication, clothing. etc for at least 3 days. We also have individual 72 hour kits should we become separated. These also include copies of important documents to prove who we are, where we live & that we are related. Things many people who were evacuated from Katrina could have used to find one another again. The whole thing makes me think of Aesop’s fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper.”

By: Queue

Queue — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 13:11:51 +0000

I’m struck by the absence in comments here of two viable rationales behind stockpiling food: (1) for those of us who are stone introverts, to minimize the number of times we have to leave the house during our “down time” (weekends, vacations, etc.); (2) for those of us who are extroverts and entertainers, so that we will never not be able to take care of people in a key nurturing way – to feed the masses, no matter how massy they may be.

I’m not arguing for either of these as good/bad/indifferent. I just think it’s useful to realize that people have reasons that aren’t related to finances and/or mental illness for doing things such as stockpiling. (The Depression-related example someone gave in last year’s comments shows this, too.)

By: Ramses

Ramses — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 20:29:33 +0000

The Dawn Jackson ‘solution’ is exactly what is making the US and UK obese.

Ready meals, full of salt and sugar, higher carb, full of unknowns.

If she means meals cooked yourself with known ingredients then frozen, then it’s a different thing.

We aren’t all saints, so convenience comes into it from time to time – but no to stock up on ready meals with ‘healthy’ written on them. Let’s not be marketed to with food and know what we are eating.

By: chacha1

chacha1 — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:54:26 +0000

I think it’s really revealing that the comments on the heart2heart site are all “wow, that’s so cool!” and the comments here are all “wow, that’s so sick!” LOL

De-stocking: it’s all in what matters to you. If you don’t mind eating mostly prepared foods, you can keep a lot more on hand. If you want fresh, you have to buy often and in small quantities.

By: MomLight.com

MomLight.com — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:03:29 +0000

[...] _____________________________________________________ Read what the Unclutterer has to say about Unstocking the Pantry. And if organizing your pantry seems like an impossible task, here are [...]

By: Open Loops 4/7/2009: Articles I Think Worth Passing Along—SimpleProductivityBlog.com—

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 10:01:30 +0000

[...] ran an article on “Unstocking the pantry“. This talks about what should be in a pantry if you are starting from scratch. My pantry [...]

By: catmom

catmom — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 02:45:31 +0000

I saw the link that Pistachio posted. Someone PLEASE tell me that it isn’t for real! Holy smokes! When my three brothers and I still lived with our parents we didn’t have near that much food stocked like in the photos. As for the photos of the linens, wrapping paper, dinnerware, etc. it looks like Bed Bath and Beyond. If that woman needs to make extra money, she could sell some of her stuff.

I’m in agreement with those who commented on the Heart 2 Heart link, how much stuff does one need?!

By: littlepitcher

littlepitcher — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 12:59:08 +0000

JC–Roaches, spiders, and mildew love fruit jar cardboard–and any other kind.
We have benches built into the dining room which hold some; the remainder are stored in drums with lids. This keeps the bugs out. A plus is that if you need it, the plastic drums can be used for water storage while the jars are full.

By: Sue B

Sue B — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:05:40 +0000

Last summer I cleaned out the cabinet we use as a pantry and I threw away 3 kitchen garbage bags full of outdated/undated items of food. That was probably over $300 of food I never used (even if a lot of it came from Big Lots) that’s a lot of wasted money. We have 4 people in our family (2 little kids.) Since then I have tried not to buy things just to stock up unless it is something I use at least once a week. It also helped that I reorganized the cabinet to store like with like so things won’t get lost.

By: cv

cv — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:10:47 +0000

I think for many people, myself included, pantry clutter isn’t caused by stocking up on things that are used all the time the way many of the commenters do. My problem comes when I buy something I use infrequently or for a new recipe and the rest of the package just hangs around waiting to be used up. I recently made an udon dish because I noticed half a pack of udon noodles sitting in the cupboard. I have most of a bag of hazelnuts because we needed half a cup for a (delicious, as it turned out) recipe, and there’s a good chance that the rest of the bag will get buried in the back of the cabinet. That’s the sort of thing that this kind of evaluation described here can really help with.

By: Michele

Michele — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 22:06:10 +0000

My grandfather was infamous for his bulging pantry (both the overstuffed shelves and the older-than-me cans themselves were bulging). When he died, we counted over four hundred cans of cat food. Many people I know/knew who lived through the Depression were the same way.