ThrottleJockey
Power Conserver
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2012
- Messages
- 162
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 39
I tend to keep on hand enough of everything we use regularly to get us through a solid year+ without restocking. This means enough flour to bake bread as well as the other uses. We keep massive amounts of bisquick, powdered milk, sugar, peanut butter, rice, instant potatoes, various dry and canned beans, baking powder, soda, cornstarch, salt both iodized and feed grade for curing, mortons quick cure, corn meal, about 12 different pastas, brown sugar, powdered sugar, condiments, herbs and spices, seed, yeast, enough canned goods to overload my pickup, etc...The chest freezer is kept stuffed with meat that is replaced and rotated as we use it, should we experience prolonged power outage we will begin curing, drying and smoking. I watch the commodities market and any time I notice potential for any particular item to skyrocket in price, I dump everything into it. I saw peanut butter about to go up a little over a year ago while it was still around a buck a pound and bought everything we had space for, now it's well over $4 a pound and I still won't need to buy any for a couple more years! We don't restrict these habits to the pantry either. I look at it like this, if I'll need something once I'll need it again. I've got multiples of everything, it causes difficulty with storage and space but that's okay, I can't even get the lawnmower in the garage or the shed and haven't for years....We throw almost nothing away, not even used nails, they get pulled and saved. I have no problem re-purposing things and don't mind previously experienced stuff like nails. For several years now we have practiced by living from our stockpiles through the winter months, November through March and restocking in the spring. This gives us a really good feel for our consumption as well as a great opportunity to get rotation squared away. It truly is a lifestyle.