In a Post-Covid world, we all should start thinking about the future. The future may look quite different than the past. For example, we are all used to just hopping into the car and going to the grocery store to buy whatever we feel like making that week. It’s starting to look more and more like a possibility instead of a conspiracy theory, that those shelves are going to become more empty as the weeks go by. Between food processing facilities burning to the ground and employee shortages, our food distribution and supply chains are certainly taking heavy hits. Whether you have kids, dogs or you are all by yourself, you need to think about what you’re going to need in the future. From a clean water supply or a means to clean the water that you have access to, all the way to the little snacks you are used to enjoying. We all need certain foods to not only survive but to remain sane. I myself am overweight because I enjoy food as it tends to calm and relax me after a long 14-hour workday. Should my food supply be limited one day, I’m not going to be a happy camper. So I would for myself and my loved ones, make sure future me doesn’t face that scenario.
The purpose of this article is to get you started with a very important checklist of items that you need to store for yourself and your family if you have one. By no means is this list complete but I think it’s a good start and as I build my own inventory of storable but realistically usable foods, I will update this list.
Let’s get started!
The goal here is to provide you with a quick list of choices that you will find you need daily or weekly. The point is, to buy these items in bulk. Depending on how much money you have or want to invest in this, you may want to purchase out as far as six months or a year. I’m not advocating that you become a prepper or a doomsday nut, just use your logic and consider the possibility that there is a real threat. A threat that one day (best case scenario) we may see a delay in our access to certain things and (worst case scenario) see a long-term or even, in some instances, the permanent inability to access certain things. I recommend that you choose items from this list that you currently use every week. Purchase as much as you can afford of each while staying mindful of the expiration dates. Take a moment and calculate how many you will be able to use before the item expires. This is a big deal. Because I learned the hard way. I bought 15 boxes of Nutri-Grain bars (which I’ve loved since I was a kid) and stored them in a plastic bin. One day, which seemed like merely six months later, I reached into that plastic bin only to find out that they had expired… as it had actually been two years! Time flies when you’re going through a pandemic doesn’t it? 🙁
3 Must-Have Quick Lists: (not in any certain order)
Snacks:
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Meals:
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Other Important Items:
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Rotate Through it All!
Now the important part of all of this is that you rotate through the soon-to-expire items first. For example, when you purchase something that has a shelf life of 6 months, you should not buy more than what you would normally use within six months, otherwise, you are wasting money.
Label Things to Make it Easier!
When you label everything, it’s much easier to cycle through it all. It doesn’t hurt to have some consistently sized shelving that you can buy from Home Depot or Lowe’s or even on Amazon. Something sturdy and of course anchored to the wall, because you never know when one of the little ones is going to see this thing as a ladder to reach the treat on the top shelf!
Some advice IF it comes to having to actually use this awesome inventory of preparedness:
Hopefully you will never need these extra stocked items, however you might. If you do, it’s important that you slow things down usage/consumption wise. If you see supplies starting to look slim on the grocery store shelves not just becoming less full, but STAYING less than fully stocked, you will need to start to slow down the usage of your stock. In other words pace yourself. Make that six months to a year inventory stretch further because you don’t know how long it will take for the supply chain to get its act together and provide the usual flow of goods to your overly dependent lifestyle. I’m just as guilty here, I seriously don’t understand how I would survive should I ever run out of toilet paper.
Bonus items, in case things go south and society breaks down due to you being the only one that PLANNED:
If things do go south and you find yourself living in a society where things are more desperate, you might want to consider these additional items for trade:
- Alcohol
- Firearms Ammunition (.22 LR, 9mm, .40, .45, .223 and 12 ga. shotgun shells) and you don’t even have to own a firearm for these to be valuable trade items.
- Condoms
- Pregnancy tests (cheap 99¢ ones at the dollar store)
- Chewing tobacco
- Cigarettes
- Cash (small bills, like 1’s and 5’s)
- Axes and hatchets
- Crowbars
- Hammers
- Nail guns
- Nails
- Nuts and bolts
- Power tools
- Saws
- Screwdrivers
- Shovels (preferably collapsible ones)
- Wrenches
