State of the Pantry

It's been a year since I started my emergency pantry project, which has provided all kinds of benefits I never expected it would. I think these are the top three:

Convenience: When I run out of a staple I don't have to drive to a store; I now always have plenty on hand.

Lower Food Bills: I can buy nonperishables we frequently use when they're on sale and keep the extra in the emergency pantry.

Less Waste: Thanks to the first-in first-out strategy and the labeling of expiration dates on the face of food products, we've also been able to cycle foods into our working pantry as they grow close to expiring, so nothing is wasted (in a year the only thing I've not used before it expired was a dollar store package of ramen.)

I'm also able to see what we constantly use (soups, rice, pasta, canned veggies, small containers) versus what we don't (dehydrated foods, mixes, canned meats, huge containers) so I have a better idea of what to stock up on for hurricane season. I've also put together an extra first aid kit and some instructions on how to make water safe for drinking, but I need to think more on what survival tactic info we might need.

Unlike last year, when prepper reports had me very concerned, I am not as alarmed by the prospect of food shortages due to tariffs. I have enough shelf-stable food in the house to keep us going for about a year now without ever buying anything more. If shortages happen and I have to rely on my emergency pantry more heavily we might not be able to eat the dishes we most like (all of which have perishable ingredients) but I can make a decent variety of meals we'll enjoy and want to eat, which is 90% of the battle.

I can't do anything about what is happening to our country (and I am not discussing that, so no comments on it, please); I can just take care of me and my guy no matter what happens. So that's my focus.

Comments

Maria Zannini said…

Brava! Good job.

I find it difficult to juggle an emergency pantry. The few emergencies we've had to weather, we didn't have much appetite, usually because we were too busy working our keesters off to fix things. We sorely missed fresh food though. Oh, and sweets. We missed sweets.

May 21, 2025 at 5:24 AM

Other Stashes

Along with clearing out the spare bedroom and tidying my office and our guest bedroom, I decided to reorganize some of my stashes. This is all the yarn I have on hand, sorted by color. It looks like a lot, but lately I've been using up a minimum of half a bin every month, so this is approximately a year's supply. All of my solid color cotton perle thread. I go through a lot of this every year, too. I need a container in which I can fit all of it together, but I haven't found the right one yet. I won't show you all of my fabric -- I'm still reorganizing this stash -- but I went through everything and donated two bins of fabric I won't need to the local quilter's guild.

Downsizing

This was my fabric stash once I sorted everything -- 22 full bins. I spent a day taking out and boxing up what I could part with, with the goal of trying to reduce it by half, so I'd have 11 bins. I was very strict with myself, and removed everything that for one reason or another I was sure I wouldn't be able to use. This is what I ended up with -- 12 bins of fabric that I'm keeping. It's not quite half, but close enough. Half of what I took out went to a local quilter friend, a school and Goodwill. These four tightly-packed bins will be going to the local quilting guild once I make arrangements with them for a drop-off place. I am relieved and a little sad and now determined to control my impulses to thrift more fabric. I don't want to do this again, so until I use up six bins, I can't for any reason bring any new fabric into the house.

In Progress

I promised myself I would show you the good, bad and ugly of my cleaning this year. This is what it looks like when you dump thirty years' worth of stashed fabric on the floor -- and oy, what a pain in the butt to pick up again! This is what it looks like after it's been sorted, folded and placed in containers, which took me about a week. Now the hard part is to downsize my stash by at least half, I think (that's my goal, anyway.) I've already e-mailed the president of the local quilting guild, a local friend who is a quilter, and a public school art teacher I know to see if I can donate some of the excess to them. The rest will go to Goodwill. Already I've reduced my vintage textiles from two bins to one, and my scraps from three bins to one. It's probably the hardest clean-out I've done, which is why I saved it until last. I know I have too much fabric, more than I can use in my lifetime -- but at the same time, I love it. So I have to...

Valerean

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