Food Storage Porn: Hot or Not. Show us pics!

[whisk.e.rebellion]

Started with this thread.

We have a bunch of bug out porn, but not nearly enough bug in porn.

Show us what you got! Motivate us to make our food stashes bigger and better.



This is the day I put the shelves up and moved everything to them. I'm still organizing and implementing suggestions from the other thread. I've also added a bunch of dried beans, canned meats, sugar and flour. I'll post updated pictures this weekend, providing I actually get something noticeable done.

Left side, top down
35 cans of cat food
17 gallons water
5 lbs dried green lentils
1 lb dried kidney beans
3 lbs dried pinto beans
5 cans refried beans (varying sizes)
7 cans pinto beans (varying sizes)
3 cans northern beans (16.5 oz)
3 cans chickpeas (16.5 oz)
3 cans black beans (varying sizes)
3 cans kidney beans (16.5 oz)
4 cans baked beans (varying sizes)
16 cans tuna
2 cans crab
2 lbs oatmeal
2 cans corned beef hash
1 can spam
1 can cheddar cheese soup
2 cans pumpkin
8 cans assorted veggies (16.5 oz)

Right side, top down
Miscellaneous tools and paper towels I was too lazy to put/throw away
5 lbs all purpose flour
Half case Ramen (chicken flavor)
12 cans peaches
12 cans mandarin oranges
6 pack fruit cups
6 pack pickle cups
1 can diced pineapple
3 boxes Goldfish
2 lbs animal crackers
2 jars Bertoli pasta sauce
1 package Kashi bars (8 in there maybe?)
3 cans New England clam chowder (varying sizes)
2 cans chili
4 lbs peanut butter
1 jar artichoke hearts
A bunch of canned tomatoes (stewed, diced, paste, sauce, whole)
2 boxes pasta
2 boxes mac & cheese
7 boxes Rice-a-Roni
Half gallon white vinegar

It's a work in progress and it will get better thanks to the help and advice of ZSers.

[meanstreak]

I just this weekend added the second set of shelves and switched the pasta and boxed items over. My food stores are a work in progress and i've only been working on this for about 2 months now. This does not include what's in our normal pantry fridge or deep freeze.

[JakkSchitt]

This pic I posted on the other thread, this shelf holds most of my dry goods and some condiments:



This is my home canned foods and some store canned tomatoes and beans:



This has canned spaghetti sauce and spaghettio type quick meal canned foods.


This is my canned green veggies shelf. I have another shelf like it for canned yellow/orange veggies



This cabinet is down in my office and has condiments, tuna, sweets, spaghetti sauces, gravies and broths



I have a freezer in my basement that is stuffed, and none of this includes what is in my kitchen cabinets, fridge or freezer. I also have a few hundred pounds of rice, flour and pasta not pictured. There is another shelf that has all canned beans.. also not pictured. I also have about a years worth of other stuff like laundry soap, personal care items, garbage bags, ziplock bags etc. Pictured is about 60% of what I have. Keep in mind we have 6 people in our family. I have four kids ages 21, 17, 13 and 3 along with my husband and myself.

[Cybercat]

YOU GUYS totally ROCK!!!! Whisk.e.rebellion, meanstreak and JakkSchitt show us the way..... I'm impressed with your efforts and willingness to nudge others to do the same....

[jeffrey]

I wish I had room for some shelving like that.

[Blast]

Uh, I lost all our stockpiled food in a boat accident.

-Blast

[JakkSchitt]

I started by buying just a few cans each time I shopped. I hit a sale at Aldi on veggies for .25 a can and I bought about 15 cases of each. Today those same canned veggies are .49 each.

The shelf with the home canned food I bought off Craigslist for $20. The large metal rack is blocking my sliding glass doors which is right next to my desk. As I sit here typing everything you see in those pictures are within arms length. I dont have much storage space so the next best place was where most people dont go, my little corner of the world which I call my office. There is no door, its the smaller space of my family room. (L-shaped). I have rice and pasta stored behind/under my livingroom sectional. TP and paper products have over-run my bedroom closet. The six of us live in a 1200 sf home, we dont have extra room. The past two weeks have been a great test-run for me, I see where my holes are and what I still need. But I know that if TSHTF tomorrow we would be fine for quite a while. The peace of mind makes up for not having space.

Here is another bookcase, this one is sqeezed between my desk and the fireplace.

[LtCmdLeia]

Love your storage Jakk!

Can I make a suggestion to everyone? If you take all those like items (the non food ones especially) and put them in containers they'll take up less room. You can get 10 like boxes of ziplock bags in a single plastic shoe box.

I promise to post more of my storage pix in the next few weeks.

[meanstreak]

I used to store my food in containers but prefer the shelves now. It was just difficult to get what I needed from them. By using the shelves, I can easily see what I have, what I need to add, and exactly where it is. I have about 50 pounds of rice in a 5 gallon container and another 5 gallon container of more pasta.

I am mainly doing this to save money. The stockpile of food is a nice side benefit. It's really become a game to see how much food, detergents and toilet paper I can get for the least amount of money. I used to spend about $100 at the grocery just getting what I needed for the week. Then I started buying about $5-10 extra each week - mainly food I thought would make nice emergency rations. Problem is I didn't want to eat those items. So then I read about the grocerygame.com and have a new outlook on groceries. I only buy things on sale - i just buy lots of them. That's just what I've acquired in 2 months and doesn't show off the normal food pantry, fridge, or deep freeze. My grocery bill has dropped almost by half already unless I find a big sale on food i like to eat.

[airexurb]

Love your storage Jakk!

Can I make a suggestion to everyone? If you take all those like items (the non food ones especially) and put them in containers they'll take up less room. You can get 10 like boxes of ziplock bags in a single plastic shoe box.

I promise to post more of my storage pix in the next few weeks.

Aha! I've been saying that here at home, but someone didn't want to. Hopefully, if the suggestion comes from someone else, he'll listen!

meanstreak, I checked out the grocerygame website. Unfortunately for us, they don;t have any coupons for the grocery store we go to But cool link nonetheless

[BigDaddyTX]

Uh, I lost all our stockpiled food in a boat accident.

-Blast

Damn, I'd like to see the canoe hold all that.

I hope you all like MREs.. I'm not taking a picture of bags of beans in a bucket or my disorganized pantry.. you can sorta see a few Canadian IMPs and there is a case of German EPAs in there somewhere too..

[JakkSchitt]

You dont need to join the Grocery game to save money on groceries. I get the coupons from the Sunday paper (well, actually from 3-4 papers, my family saves them for me) and I match them to what is on sale at the three local stores. It takes time but I have more time than money. Last month I spent $197 for the entire month on groceries.. and we have SIX people in our house. I have gotten to the point where I walk out of the store and look at my receipt and I swear its better than an orgasm! I now shop ONLY loss leaders, and pay full price only for fresh milk and eggs. The stores by me double coupons and certain items you buy give you "register money" good on your next purchase. Its become an addiction for me.. see how much I can get for just a little bit of cash. AND.. I never buy just one of anything. I usually make my list from the sale papers and my matching coupons, and go in to buy just 5 or 6 items. But, I buy 4 of each of those items. One goes in the pantry, the others go on the shelf.

I do have a lot of it broken down out of the boxes. Things like rice I have stored in soda bottles and then put under and behind my LR sectional. The pasta is broken down into ziplock bags and then sealed in a rubbermaid tub. The big shelving unit I have holds a LOT. The cereal doesnt stay stacked nicely when it isnt in the box. I have 63 boxes of cereal on those shelves! They are deep shelves and can hold several boxes deep.

I have a few cases of MREs that I keep stored in the closet by the front door. Those are mainly in case we have to leave in a rush. I do not plan on eating MRE's for any extended period in a bug-in situation. My plans are to bug-in unless I absolutely have to leave.

Here are some receipts from March:
This one I bought 3 boxes of cereal for .04. You can see on the receipt the coupon amount saved was $8.93. This was before they started doubling coupons.



This one you can see I saved $47.93 and my total paid was $27.78



This weeks receipts:
Total spent $26.91, saved $45.27 in coupons


Total spent $22.55, saved $43.22 in coupons


Total spent $19.11, saved $32.20 in coupons


Total spent $12.43, saved $40.47 in coupons


This week I spent a total of $80 on groceries.

The store by me that doubles coupons will double $1 coupons. So each $1 off is really $2 off. BUT they will only double up to 5 of those each trip in to the store. So I take my daughter with me and she goes to one register and I go to anohter. There are some times when I have to go myself so I am in the store more than once. Like I said, I have more time than money so it is worth it for me. Saving money can be done, it just takes time and patience.

[meanstreak]

You dont need to join the Grocery game to save money on groceries.

I completely agree. I don't actually pay them. I got the trial account, learned a bit from it and then a buddy took me under his wing to teach me more. You're absolutely right about it being addicitive. I believe you and I follow the same philosophy.

Obligatory porn: the pantry we eat from

[LtCmdLeia]

I've was a member of grocerygame for a long time. Couponmom.com has a very similar list but it's free (the lists are on the "grocery deals by state" link)

[mtnfolk mike]

wow.. great stuff folks... i wish i had more room to have such big shelves filled with food.... we have a small space in our pantry filled.... it'll due for now...

[yale]

Let's see, where to start. OK. Having lived my whole life (41 years) in Southeast Louisiana I have always been prepared to various degrees for emergencies, mostly storm related.
I've always had lots "militia" gear but it's not really been ready to go on short notice. In the past 5 years or so I've kicked it up a notch and started getting myself and my spouse organized.
Most of my long term food was in the form of MRE's. Every once in a while we'd have MRE dinnernight and eat some of our stock. Finding the money to replace the MREs was sometimes difficult and stock was soon depleted. Hurricane Katrinia hit and suddenly I had MREs being given out at work and by nearly every relief agecy. As the few Katrina MREs I had gotten were starting to be depleted along came Gustav. Again I got civilian MREs handed out at work. I took mine and any that my coworkers didn't want. I also passed through National Guard Points Of Distribution (PODs) and got a few more cases of MREs. I stopped at the local City Hall for info about FEMA aid and ended up being given 2 cases of Heater Meals. I keep all of MREs/Heater Meals stored in a closet in a room in the front of my house. I took them out to take a photo once and this is what I have...

I also have stocked up on several cases of water. Currently they are stored along a wall in my living room.

Additionally I have more than 40 two liter soda bottles full of water. Here are some of them stacked on a rack in our kitchen.

More to come.........

[yale]

Here's more...
I had been putting quite a few groceries on a metal rack in the kitchen where they were easy to get to but the space was limited and soon it was quite full. See?

So we got everything off and inventoried it. It covered our kitchen table.

Once we knew what we had we cleaned out and reorganized some cabinets in the kitchen to make room for more stuff. We started picking up sales fliers from local supermarkets and buying loss leaders and BOGO items. We'd get home with sale items like this...


Even more to come.......

[yale]

Even more......
A couple of weeks would pass, I'd get paid and we'd hit the sales again. We'd haul home stuff like this...

Another payday and another trip to the stores brought us this...

More pay days, more BOGO bargains...

[yale]

Oh my gosh there's more...
One payday we stocked up on condiments....

Another time we found chili and sloppy joe mix on sale...

We got veggies on sale once....

and

[yale]

This is getting silly....
Then there was a sale on tomato products so we got some of that...

We got some evaporated milk too.

We stocked up on olives and shrooms too...

Peas went on sale and we got them...

[yale]

Oh good grief...
Spaghetti sauce went on sale one payday and we got lots of that....

We picked up a whole case of vegetable oil...

One supermarket had an anniversary sale and we got a case of mayonnaise for about half off regular price along with half off cases of veggies...

We hit a big sale one time and got a large stack stuff seen here...

and here...

[yale]

Next we started getting everything put in it's place.
Finally, it's about time...

We started stacking cans on shelves under the watchful eyes of our cat overlords...

Evenutally that shelf looked like this...

Other shelves looked like this one which has been filled even more since this was taken....

Here's another kitchen shelf...

[yale]

MAKE IT STOP!!!!.........
A lower shelf holds a case of Mac&Cheese, the case of Mayo, a couple cases of veggies and some more bottles of water.....

So that's pretty much my food storage that I have minus a few bottles of soda stacked in a corner.
Oh wait, here's one more picture of some stuff we got on a sale that went into the pantry....

hahahahaha......


Seriously, that's it. Comments?????

[Broken1]

Wow... Do you have room for people and furniture at the house after all that?