The plan to store and keep on hand three months’ worth of foodgot fully under way with a day-long voyage to every food and junk emporium within driving distance.
A week ago, M’hijito and I picked up the freezer at Costco, and he helped get it out of the vehicle and into its place of honor. Yah, I know: would’ve been cheaper to buy it off Craig’s List. But that would have a) entailed traipsing 30 or 40 miles across the Valley and b) left me with an unknown quantity. For a reasonable price—two hundred bucks—I got a brand-new unit with a warranty from a retailer that will take practically anything back.
Next steps were to estimate about about how much I would need to create a three-month stash of food and necessities, and then to reconnoiter to see how much was already on hand. I created an Excel list of all the storable supplies I could think of and estimated (sometimes wildly) how much would be needed for one month and how much for three months—the one-month guesses because there’s no way I can afford to buy all of three months’ supplies of everything I use from day to day. Here’s a PDF of the result.
A check of the refrigerator’s freezer revealed a surprising amount of meat—over a month’s worth. Of late I seem to be eating less and less meat, partly because in the absence of a gas grill it’s more trouble to cook than it’s worth. My stash was heavy on pieces of steak and light on fish and chicken, so I decided to pick up some of those at Costco, where both are already packaged for freezing.
Based on how much I already had in the house, I made a shopping list in Word showing how much of each item was needed to supply one month’s needs and how much for three months. Some items were likely to be found at more than one vendor: some things Safeway carries, for example, might be cheaper at Target or Food City. And some items that I would like to buy in lifetime supplies don’t appear at Costco: demerara sugar (shown on my list as “crunchy sugar”) is one such. In those cases, I listed the possible sources in separate columns. Then I had Word sort the table first by Vendor 1 and then by Vendor 2. This grouped all the things I needed to purchase by the stores where I thought I could find the stuff.
And then it was off to the high seas of commerce! M’hijito, having nothing much better to do with his time and needing to go to Costco anyway, joined the expedition as sherpa-in-chief. Thanks goodness! I don’t know how I would have hauled all the junk myself, or even stuck with the plan: it was 2:30 in the afternoon before I got home, and I’d left around 9:30 in the morning.
Surprisingly, this enterprise cost nothing like what I expected. I’d planned to spend about $500 for the initial grubstaking of the project. But the grand total of charges from Costco, Safeway, Sprouts, and Target came to $375.36, only $75 more than my usual weekly budget. I still have to buy gas, which will cost about $25—but that’s still only about $100 more than I normally spend every week trotting around to supermarkets and big boxes. For that amount, I got a full month’s supply of food, and then some.
But the truth is, the food alone cost significantly less: about $322. As part of the junket, I bought a number of nonfood items: storage jars, baskets to organize goods in the freezer, antibiotic ointment, trash bags, sponges, seeds for the garden. Three hundred and twenty-two bucks is not bad, for putting in up to three months’ of food.
Now we’ll see if this works! Can she stay out of grocery stores?
It would be ideal if I could cut trips to grocery and box stores to no more than two a month, after a first-of-the-month stocking-up foray. Because I have some produce growing in the garden—chard, lettuce, carrots, beets, onions, herbs—this just might work. It would be like living in Yarnell, my sun-parched brain’s idea of Bali Hai: clinging to the edge of the Mogollon Rim, you couldn’t very well drive 60 or 80 miles one-way to buy a few convenience items, and so you’d learn to make do between monthly expeditions.
In addition to the obvious savings from simply staying out of stores and having to plan each shopping list carefully, I believe that storing up a cache of food and household supplies, which undoubtedly will grow as the months pass, will create a hedge against the inflation we can expect to come down on us with a vengeance. Whether that happens or not, at the very least it will be a safety net in case of a layoff, or against the time when I retire and see my income drop by about 60 percent. Any way you look at it, this appears to be a good idea.
I do the same kind of thing in a much more haphazard way. I have a hard time using up the stockpile, so I’ve been on a self-imposed $20/week budget. Even so, using the food up is a slow process.
I began buying extra bags of lentils in grad school, when I had a tremendous fear of abject poverty. Aside from saving money, I think the stress-reduction of “at least I won’t starve!” is valuable.
Sounds like you got it all done at once! I’m in the process, too, of building up a few months of reserves. I have a tiny house so storage makes things a challenge, but I’m working on planting the heck out of my yard, so at least I’ll be well prepared for any crisis that happens in the summer or fall, when fruits and veggies are ripe, hah.
Sounds like you got a great deal on the freezer, sometimes buying new makes perfect sense, and it does here. Have fun with your food storage plan. I am sure you have already checked this out, but we save some bucks by using some principals of once a month cooking (OAMC) — making premade whole dinners and stashing them in the freezer for when we are too tired after work to cook — grabbing the big gallon ziplock bag with the stirfry chicken,the veggies, and sometimes even dessert all ready to go is a blessing. OAMC really helps us avoid the take-out food. There are some great sites and recipes online if you just google OAMC. Anyway, have fun, so far your plan looks to me like it will be a big money saver.
I’m going to keep an eye on your adventure. I try to implement these principals to some extent, but we tend to move every few years and I’ve been guilty of having a full pantry when moving time comes. That sort of negates the financial savings for us.
Have fun and good luck!
Just be sure to circulate your freezer contents and don’t just buy things because they are on sale… they will rot for 3 years in that thing, constantly being pushed aside for all the other things in your freezer that you want to eat instead of eating it because there is nothing else in the freezer. But if you can do those things, it is a great way to save some money, time, and sanity.
We are doing the same thing, though we just order bulk foods that we like online. And we are doing without a freezer, in case a significant power outage is part of any disaster or man-made event. Also, we eat non-traditional foods from the America’s, like quinoa, chia, and amarinth, have loads of Himalayan sea salt and various oils stashed. We are vegan and have sprouting seeds stored for daily vitamins and minerals, plus an indoor vermiculture for worm compost. I’ll bet we can trade the red wigglers to folks for fishing bait in exchange for items we need, if necessary.
this post has been stuck in the back of my mind for months now. i think i need to start keeping track and see what 1 and 3 months worth of total groceries would look like for me so i can maybe try something similar.