Food Storage Tips

Food storage is an important part of preparation in case of an emergency.  It is important that you and your family set up a system that works well with your family size and needs.  Here are some tips for food storage (a comprehensive list and excellent resource is at this website):

1.  Store your food in a cool, dark, dry place.  This can be a basement, closet, kitchen, attic, under your bed, or even stored in a chest and used as a table.  Be creative if you have small living quarters!

2. Figure out how much storage you need for you and your family.  Use this cool calculator to figure it out.

3.  Decide how to store your food storage.  Put your food in 5 to 6 gallon buckets or pails.  There are different ways of "sealing" your food so moisture doesn't get in and cause the food to spoil.  There are mylar bags, the dry ice method, CO2 and Nitrogen flush method, bay leaves, freezing your grain, and the diatomaceous earth powder (which is used to kill insects and is approved for human consumption).

4.  What is the shelf life of your food?  There is a great chart on the website that shows the general shelf life of foods.

5.  Make sure to rotate your food so it doesn't spoil or get eaten by rodents or insects (I grew up eating wheat that was stored it in a big 5-gallon bucket, and we never had problems.  The same thing goes for home canned goods, or canned goods from the store).

- Make sure that you have food on your shelves that you are willing to eat, because if there is no emergency, you will want to eat and rotate your storage. 

- It is important to store extra water for your dehydrated foods that you will be rehydrating.  Follow the chart on the website for rehydration.

- If you eat one meal a week from your storage shelves, you will go through your one year supply in 7 years.