Pantry Assessment and Prep
How do we prepare? Where do we even begin?
When I first decided that I wanted a life grounded in readiness, I didn’t know where to look. So, I just started with food. My first step was looking inside my own pantry. I took an inventory. Was it organized? What did we actually have?
Back then, we didn’t have much. I didn’t preserve food in any meaningful way. I gardened, but nowhere near the scale I eventually discovered we would need, or the scale I’ve managed to achieve twenty years later under the scorching Arizona sun. I’ve lived and I’ve learned. Some attempts were valuable failures, while others were stunning successes. I’ve wasted money I wish I had back, and I’ve spent money on items that paid for themselves in no time at all.
I can’t tell you exactly where your personal journey should begin, other than to start by taking inventory. The rest is just a series of small steps that you can take in whatever order makes sense for your life. In this guide, I’m starting with the foundational elements I learned to value. Every piece of the puzzle is important, but your unique life, your location, and your family will dictate which areas you need to focus on first.
If you want to find out where I started, how it went, and how to avoid the expensive mistakes I have made, make sure and follow along. As we prepare this guide, join the blog list, and move forward living a fuller, healthier, quieter life.
After organizing our kitchen and figuring out what we actually had, my first major step was buying six 5-gallon buckets for long-term food storage. My system is simple: each bulk item has its own dedicated 5-gallon bucket and a matching 1-gallon bucket. The 5gallon bucket stays out in our cold storage, while the 1-gallon bucket lives in the house pantry for daily use. I do not refill the 5 gallon bucket until I am ready to transfer that last gallon from cold storage into the kitchen. Some people might say this rotation is risky, but I refuse to lose our hard-earned food to weevils, bugs, or mice. This is how my system works for us—you may find a system that works better for your specific home.
To keep everything pristine, I rely heavily on Mylar storage bags and oxygen absorbers. I prefer bags that are at least 7mil thick; they are a little more expensive, but they are much heavier and won't puncture easily. While I utilize these heavily for all of the freezedried goods we store, they also work beautifully for breaking down bulk items into smaller, more manageable portions before sealing them into buckets.
What We Keep on Hand:
● Oats: Excellent for quick, filling meals and long-term stability.
● Beans: Pinto, navy, and kidney beans are staples, along with lentils to a smaller degree.
● Rice: Keep in mind that whole grain or brown rice will go rancid in a short time— usually 1 to 2 years—due to the natural oils in the grain. White rice is what you want for true long-term storage.
● Sugar & Flour: Essential baking foundations.
● Baking Soda: A crucial baking leavening agent that doubles as a powerful, nontoxic cleaner and health aid.
● Salt: The ultimate survival mineral. It is absolutely essential for biological life, vital for preserving meats, and necessary for making bland storage foods edible. We keep a dedicated bulk bucket just for salt.
● Tomato Sauce: A crucial base for turning dry staples into actual meals.
● Apple Cider Vinegar: An invaluable asset for food preservation, pickling, cooking, and natural wellness.
● Powdered Milk: For cooking and baking redundancies.
● Pasta: We keep it on hand, but I am actively learning to make my own noodles. It is just another fun advantage of having more chickens and quail than we actually need.
The Challenge of Fats and Oils
You cannot survive on dry grains alone; so you’ll need to add oil and butter to your inventory. Your body desperately needs fats, but storing them long term, especially in the Arizona heat, is a major challenge.We buy these in bulk at Costco and store them straight in our cold box. Heat and sunlight will rapidly degrade cooking oil and cause the plastic containers to break down, so you must store them completely out of the heat.
HoneyClick Me
Nature's perfect sweetener. It makes stored food taste great and carries incredible natural antibacterial properties. We have added multiple beehives to our property, although this isn’t strictly necessary since pure honey never spoils—though it will eventually crystallize over time. It remains a very beneficial, long-term asset to any pantry.
MRE’s (Meals Ready to Eat)
I know a lot of people keep MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) on hand, but the chemical ingredients, the taste, and the high price completely put me off. We did eventually invest in a Harvest Right freeze dryer, and let me tell you, it has been an absolute gamechanger. But a freeze dryer is a high-ticket item; not everyone has the funds or the space for one. Freeze-dried foods deserve a deep dive of their own, so we will cover that later in this series.
The free pantry assessment checklist is located here, just provide your first name and email address and we'll email you the download.
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