How to Prepare For Lean Times

With the uncertainty of the economy, possibility of natural disaster or terrorist attack, keeping your home and auto well stocked for emergency or just leaner times makes sense. Nobody wants to be a refugee during the worst of times. Planning can make the difference between standing in a soup line and being able to keep your family going.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Ability to budget your money and your efforts

1. Each time you shop, buy more than what is on the list. Example, if you have vanilla extract on your list, buy two bottles instead of one. If you need three cans of tomato paste, buy four or five. This is not limited to food, but everything you buy or use in your home to include medical supplies, first aid items, games for the children, tools, garden seeds, automotive needs, etc.
2. Transparent drawers help you see where extra items are Start a "self-sufficiency pantry" where you will put the extras of everything. If you have an extra bedroom, turn it into your pantry. If you have empty drawers in any room, use the drawer for your pantry. In mild climates, you can use your garage, shed or even a playhouse.
   
   I use the term "pantry" as an area which stores all manner of supplies rather than just groceries.
3. Keep batteries in a bucket with a screw-top lid Buy items in bulk whenever you can. Membership at a Costco or Sam's Club will prove beneficial in buying staples such as spices, rice, beans, flour and sugar in twenty or fifty pound bags. If these are things you always use, it pays to buy as much as your budget allows. Properly stored, they have a long shelf life. Still, when you run out of an item in your kitchen cupboard, restock it with what you have stored in your pantry, but don't use that as a reason not to shop and replenish your kitchen items. Put the item on your shopping list as if you just ran completely out of that item. Then, buy more than one and add the new items to your pantry.
   
   Shelving, storage bins or drawers are the easiest way to keep your pantry items rotated with your daily use items. When you take something from your pantry shelf, add new cans or items to the back of the drawer or shelf so nothing gets old or reaches the expiration date before you get to it.
4. the coffee cupboard An alternate approach is to keep track of everything you use in your home, in your yard and in your car every day. List every ingredient in every meal, every item you use in your yard or in your garden. Keep one list of everything you use. Do this for a week or a month and then prepare a list of things you usually need to go buy when you run out of it. Batteries are one item that most people keep forgetting about until they need something that is battery operated. Check your flashlights once a week. Check your smoke alarms once a month. Look at the toys the children play with frequently. Write down what size batteries they use and how many. Put that on a list of items to get.
   
   Once you have your very long list, break the list down to groceries, car, household, yard. See what you use most often. List items you use every single day such as razor, shaving gel, mouth wash, toothbrush, toothpaste or denture cleaner, denture adhesive, deodorant, soap, cereal, milk, butter, salt, etc. You see where this is going, it will seem endless. But once you see the kinds of things you use every day, you'll be better prepared to take advantage of specials when they come along.
5. Know when to stock up. Historically, grocery stores mark down most of their baking supplies right after major holidays. This includes chocolate morsels, flour, sugar, cocoa powder, pie tins with a prepared crust, evaporated milk, many spices such as nutmeg and cinnamon. Vanilla and other flavor extracts will come down too. But some baking supplies are overstocked in the stores in anticipation of consumers doing more baking during the holiday. So often the sales start before the holiday.
   
   Coffee is usually on sale before and during the holidays. Tea in the larger ice-tea bags will go on sale in the autumn as iced tea will be replaced by hot tea drinkers. Stock up on those economical ice tea-sized tea packages when they go on sale. As long as the tea is kept sealed, it will stay good for several years.
   
   As you can see from the photo, coffee products are enjoyed frequently in my house, so I have a cupboard for just coffee. What I have found most important is to forget about being loyal to a specific brand. Use a store brand and add a bit more coffee to the filter when brewing. It's a fast way to cut grocery dollars and afford to stay well stocked. Lean times are hard enough without having to omit the luxury of coffee or the occasional after dinner mint.
6. 2-liter bottles hold one of my luxuries, after dinner mints So now that you have the list, you should break it down even further by type of items. For example, if you use sugar, maple syrup, honey, jams or preserves in the same week, these can all fit under the category of sugars. Make a shopping trip to the store for items in the sugar category or the condiment category or the spice category. Focus on just one category each month.
   
   Determine in advance of getting to the store how much money you want to spend for your storage items. Let's say you have $50 and the category is sugar. In addition to what is on your regular grocery list, you would also get:
   
   20 pounds sugar
   10 pounds brown sugar
   2 bottles maple syrup
   2 jars honey
   2 boxes artificial sweetener
   1 jar grape jelly
   1 jar orange marmalade
   1 jar strawberry preserves
   5 pounds powdered sugar
   1 jar molasses
   
   Don't make the mistake of duplicating items in your categories such as brown sugar on both the "sugar" as well as on the "baking" category. This will allow you to build your lean times pantry much faster than if you just add an item or two of the things on the usual grocery list.
   
   Don't forget medications, first aid items, paper products, games, deck of cards, toys for the little ones and things that you rarely need more than one of such as a thermometer. Having a spare only seems wasteful until you need it. Is there anything else? Something you only splurge on for your birthday or anniversary or New Year's Eve? Include it.
   
   Comfort foods and similar items should also have a category. There is no reason to scrimp and do without anything no matter what tragedy or emergency might come your way.
7. When you get where you want to be with your "lean times" pantry, rotate your on hand kitchen items with your pantry. For example, if you keep 2 pounds of sugar in a cannister on the counter of your kitchen, another pound in a bowl on the table and your cannister runs out, fill the cannister with sugar in the lean times pantry. Then add sugar to your grocery list. When you get another 5-pound bag the next time you go to the store, put it in the pantry behind the others bags of sugar. This will keep both your kitchen and pantry well stocked.
   
   What's the target? The target should be a six-month supply. Ideally, a year's supply is best. But the first thing anyone thinks when they hear that is something negative. Too big, too much, too expensive, need too many other things, blah, blah, blah. Then do it in smaller increments - Plan for a three or two month pantry. Build to there or from there. It doesn't matter. As long as you can see the long road and the big picture. And remember, this is a target. Nothing is cast in stone. If you didn't quite have your target amount in the time frame you had hoped for, you can continue to work on it. Nobody knows when or if another terrorist attack is coming. There is no specific date on the calendar marked "economic collapse" or "lay off begins." You prepare and build the pantry for your own and your family's own sense of well-being when things are falling apart all around you.
8. Jars of dry goods on floor in front of a washer and dryer. Where to put all this stuff? Your kitchen is small and you only have so much space. That's true in most households. There's never enough space. So who says you have to have a single, specific place designated as a pantry? I have food stored in every nook and cranny in my 3-room house. I use buckets with screw top lids, gallon and larger sized jars from restaurants and delis strewn on the floor in front of walls, in front of the washer and dryer, under the bed, under tables, in the shed, under the sink, on top of cabinets and I keep things like dehydrated fruits in my car. Extra bottles of water stay there, too, but that's another article.

Tips & Warnings

• Don't try to stock up on everything all at once.
• Make a plan and pace yourself
• Stock only things you always use
• Plan for your household, plus one
• "Too much" is always better than "not enough"
• Rotate your stored items with your daily use items
• Buy a freezer so you can stock up on real savings when they come along.
• Shop at the Dollar Stores for canned meats such as tuna or canned hams. These are usually the best prices
• Learn to can the foods you love and store the items you always keep on hand
• Learn to garden to grow vegetables and herbs. Start small and work your way into a bigger garden each year. If you start out with a big garden, you might lose interest when it becomes more work than pleasure.
• Never spend more than you can afford on extras. If you spend too much, you will consume that which you stored almost immediately rather than saving for the leaner times.
• Don't put new items from the store in top of nor in front of older items. Always rotate the newest items to the back or to the bottom of the pantry shelf or drawer.