[Minner77]

How good are you at monitoring your stockpile?

I had what I thought was a dandy stockpile, but I basically piled it in the storage area and forgot about it once I set it up. I went through it recently and found tons of it was expired or near expiration!

It strikes me that, as I start anew, I will have to be very diligent about monitoring my new effort, and about planning menus around the items I stockpile -- not just adding broth and beans and crackers because they seem like good things to have.

How about you guys? Do you have specific plans for your stockpiles, or are you going by a "generic" plan of what seems to make sense?

~Mary

 

[kestrel91316]

Here's my stockpile "plan":

Got lotsa dry pinto beans and a few pounds of other dry beans/pulses. Don't need any more right now. Gotta use up those pinto beans from 2110, dammit.

Got lotsa hard red wheat berries and cornmeal and flour and rice. Gotta use up that cornmeal from 2000, dammit.

Got a box of nonfat dry milk. Need another one but it won't fit in the pantry (an antique wardrobe with shelves put in it by my dad). Oh, well.

Got several packages of pasta and jars of marinara sauce. Yep. Good. Several cans of tuna, couple of salmon, sardines, anchovies. Yep. Some miscellaneous home canned stuff. 8 jars of home canned applesauce. Never can have too much applesauce on hand.

Gotta get this stockpile thing more organized. Got gaps. No where to cram anything else in, though. Sigh.

Oh, yeah: got a few gallons of vinegar and lots of molasses and honey and sugar. 4 boxes of baking soda.

 

[Domestic Gal]

I had my stockpile all over the house. I was getting overwhelmed with it. In June I went through it all and moved all of the food to my kitchen. Anything that had a short expiration date got put in one area. It was not a lot but I made sure it got used up.
I now can see what I have, what I do not need to buy and I rotate when I put stuff away.
I know about how much of each we use a month so I try and stock up 6 months supply at a time. That is about when the sales cycle around here.
I also do a no spend month about 3 times a year. This is when I only allow myself $25 a week for groceries. This in mainly for fresh produce and dairy items. That way the stock pile does get eaten from and can get rotated. I will be doing this in January as the freezer is so full that If a good deal comes around I can not even partake as I have no where to put it.
I took my turkey out early just so I would have room for some other stuff. I will also be getting another turkey here in a few weeks from work and I have not place for it.

It is just a matter of keeping on top of it. A stockpile is not any good when stuff goes bad because it never got used.
I sometimes will pick an item that I have a lot of and needs used and try and use it up in as many different ways as possible for that week. Like if I have lots of canned tomato products I will try and use up as many as possible in a week. We will try lots of new recipes and old ones that use lots of this item.
Or I will say that I can only use things from the freezer above the fridge (where all of the leftover bits an pieces end up). That week will be creating new meals out of the leftovers in the freezer. This helps from not having anything go past its expiration and get freezer burn.

 

[Thrifty Mom]

This is something I have to work on. Since we eat so many home grown & home canned foods, I sometimes forget to keep tabs on the cupboards. As I was checking through the other day, I thought maybe I should go through every six months & pull anything that will expire in 6 months to the front, so I remember to used them up.

 

[Patty A]

Here is a great little helper.....
http://organizedhome.com/printable/household-notebook/pantry-inventory

This is a printable pantry inventory list, they really help.
This might make it easier for you......

 

[Wendy99]

My kitchen is very small so the majority of my food (that is unopened) goes down to the stockpile (in a closet at the bottom of the stairs). I'm pretty good about using up whats there and replacing when something gets used up, but not at rotating so they oldest stuff gets used first (maybe I should be marking the items or something?) and sometimes stuff gets piled in the back that I forget about etc ... I think it would help me to keep better track of it

 

[IntlMom]

Mines pretty well organized, so far I haven;t seen stuff get close to expiration......but I guess I need to watch that.

 

[madhen]

I have all my food in pull-out drawers, so I can look at what is in the back, or on shelves with glass fronts. Pretty much every time I use anything (about 1-2x/week) from my stockpile, I take a look at what is in there and what needs to be dealt with. I have been doing the same with my fridge. If something has been sitting there too long, I try to figure out how to make something either with ingredients on hand or that will require only one or two ingredients that have to be bought.

It isn't a super-organized, tallies on a piece of paper, type system, but it seems to work for me.

 

[Minner77]

I had my stockpile all over the house. I was getting overwhelmed with it. In June I went through it all and moved all of the food to my kitchen. Anything that had a short expiration date got put in one area. It was not a lot but I made sure it got used up.
I now can see what I have, what I do not need to buy and I rotate when I put stuff away.
I know about how much of each we use a month so I try and stock up 6 months supply at a time. That is about when the sales cycle around here.
I also do a no spend month about 3 times a year. This is when I only allow myself $25 a week for groceries. This in mainly for fresh produce and dairy items. That way the stock pile does get eaten from and can get rotated. I will be doing this in January as the freezer is so full that If a good deal comes around I can not even partake as I have no where to put it.
I took my turkey out early just so I would have room for some other stuff. I will also be getting another turkey here in a few weeks from work and I have not place for it.

It is just a matter of keeping on top of it. A stockpile is not any good when stuff goes bad because it never got used.
I sometimes will pick an item that I have a lot of and needs used and try and use it up in as many different ways as possible for that week. Like if I have lots of canned tomato products I will try and use up as many as possible in a week. We will try lots of new recipes and old ones that use lots of this item.
Or I will say that I can only use things from the freezer above the fridge (where all of the leftover bits an pieces end up). That week will be creating new meals out of the leftovers in the freezer. This helps from not having anything go past its expiration and get freezer burn.

I like this idea of doing a no spend month every now and then to force yourself to use up what you have. I need -- need! -- to do something like this.

I did take a good inventory and match up what I had with recipes. We'll be eating lots of tuna, peanut butter, and oats!

Thanks for the good ideas, all. Keep 'em coming!
~Mary

 

[fixer]

The thing the helps us is rotating our stockpile. We always make sure the new stuff is to the back and the old stuff is to the front. We only buy what we use anyway so preparing menus and such is easy. Now, if we could just get our chest freezer in line!

 

[Contrary Housewife]

I go through every now and then and inventory what I have. I try not to pile things too deeply, but you know how it is. And DH has a habit of just shoving new stuff in the first spot he sees and pushing everything else behind it.

So I have a list of what is in the garage and how many, and what is in the freezer in the kitchen, and I try to mark items off when I use them up. This also helps me plan meals, if I can tell at a glance that we have X packages of kielbasa but no ground beef. It helps keep me familiar with what we have and what I just used up. I also have a list of what extra food I have frozen for quick dinners (I do the cook once, eat twice thing from time to time).

I recently went through the pantry and dry goods and tossed a lot of old stale stuff that had been hidden behind newer things. I have a habit of hiding snacks so I don't eat them all at once, and then forgetting they are there.

I also went through all my frozen butter and pulled the older packages to the front. I have some with 2007 expiration dates that needs to get used up before what I bought last week.

So, it's not a specific, regulated plan, I just sort through things every couple of months to keep it from getting completely out of control, and to update my lists.

 

[Cricketlegs]

Mine is in my sewing room. I have 7 five shelf shevles and I have my stuff well organized.

The dates run newest to the back and oldest to the front so we always grab what needs to be eaten first.

I check it everyday for any vermin/insects.

I am getting a years worth together but we eat off it too.

Ours is to eat, not to look at or collect.

 

[Kathyann]

I do a so so job on my stockpile. I too, have thought I was doing terrific only to find expired foods.

 

[ladykemma2]

you don't have to throw out expired foods. eat them!

 

[Minner77]

ladykemma --

I confess that I am not going to throw out four jars of peanut butter.... just can't do it (date isn't very old, I think). I just made African Peanut Stew, and Thai Peanut Burgers are coming up on my list. Tuna is something else I have a lot of -- not expired yet, but coming up soon. And canned fruit. And powdered milk.

I like how some people -- like madhen --- take a gander at their shelves every couple weeks and plan around it. Makes such sense (which must be why *I* don't do it :dopey

~Mary

 

[itlw8]

I like to consider mine a well stocked pantry more than a stockpile for some long range emergency.

I buy low and we use it... try to plan menus from what we have and shop the pantry before going to the store. It is in the basement and at the end of the day I just do not want to go get anything so I have started bringing up everything I need fot the week when I plan just like going to the store. Things that rarely are used that are in the kitchen got moved to the pantry to make room

Because of coupons and great sales it is the biggest it ever has been and includes things like shampoo that I never stored before.

I am now stocking up on the few things we buy that never seem to go on sale like canned fruit just so I can avoid shopping every week. dh can pick up milk andf bread on his way home from work.

 

[Gardengal18]

I check our once every 2 weeks. If anything is needed I add and replace it then.

 

[AmyBoz]

Apparently not as well as I thought I was doing.

We cleaned out the basement this past weekend and in the process, uncovered some of my storage shelves where I had 10 jars of pasta sauce, a buttload of cleaning supplies and HBA. What had happened was that we had moved some items into the basement and covered up the shelves. Out of sight, out of mind.

However, now that the area is open, I have a constant, visual reminder of what we have.

 

[Jeanna]

Mine is only in a couple of places. So it is not to hard to monitor. Of course at the moment it is down quite a bit but I have plans to get it back up to snuff in the next month or so.

 

[patticakes]

I have a limited sapce as well. I limited the HBA supplies to the cabinet in the bathroom, when that is full I consider it stocked. As for pantry items, those are spread out. I have a cabinet in the laundry room for odd sized cans (beans, fruit, stock, pet food), a hutch in the living room (no one would suspect that is where the vegetables, spagetti sauce, crackers, jams etc are stored). In the kitchen are a soups, pasta, oils, spices - its a dinky kitchen. I have ventured out into the garage but need to remind myself that there is stuff there.

A large laundry room with good storage is on the want list of our next house. Basements are a rare breed here.