Oops, this got long, sorry!
1. What have been your biggest challenges/downfalls/failures turned successes with stockpiling and bulk buying?
Learning to estimate how much we really use of things (and psychically anticipate what the kids will suddenly refuse to eat, LOL). I keep getting better at that while I go, but I have failed miserably at times.
Refusing to admit that we just aren't ever going to use up certain things, and hanging onto them way too long (but then gifting them to a friend feels good).
Underestimating how perishable some things are. I hate it when I buy too many bags of carrots on sale and they start getting slimy before we use them. (And do I ever learn? I just bought 6 5-lb bags of carrots on sale yesterday! I think I need more of those green bags to repackage them in.)
Learning to keep the stockpile off limits to pets. I lost an entire bushel of potatoes and two nearly-new bushel baskets last month. I will spare you the details.
Keeping our diet interesting while eating from pantry. Finding varied and acceptable recipes that use only or primarily the ingredients I consider standard in my pantry. The more recipes you find that can do this, the more successful you'll be at pantry-eating. Also I have learned over time that the more flexible you can be in your cooking, the easier you can eat from pantry. If you are stuck following recipes to the letter, you'll have to shop when you're out of an ingredient.
Not buying stuff simply because it is a good deal. That took a lot of practice for me. Unless it's exactly what we use and like, and I know we won't go through it too slowly or too quickly, I won't buy it in bulk.
Learning the hard way to NOT stock certain ingredients that might make me use up other spendy ingredients too fast. If I have cocoa or lemon juice in the house, I use up way too much maple syrup (spendy) making hot chocolate and lemonade. I stopped buying boxes of soymilk/ricemilk/almondmilk because I was making yummy mama-drinks with them like there was no tomorrow. We don't otherwise drink boxed milk and we can easily get by without it, so we do - but I used to buy a case when it was on sale, until I realized I was wasting that $$.
More below under treats...
2. Where do you keep your stash?
Garage (bins, buckets, and shelves), under the bed, clothes closets, laundry room, downstairs playroom (like a basement), behind the living room easy chair (kittycorner to the wall). The garage gets too cold in winter for some things.
3. Do you have a goal?
I want to learn how to rootcellar carrots and cabbage and work that into our pantry plan. Unfortunately, we don't have a spot in the house that has root cellar conditions. Our garage freezes in winter, our basement is musty/warm, the laundry room can get very cold (high 40s) but it's full of sunlight, and our bedroom walk-in closet is stuffed pretty tightly (also I'm not sure I'd want to keep buckets of sand in there, or cabbage).
Also I want to learn to contribute more from our garden to the pantry. More canning and freezing this year.
About storage: I get 5-gallon plastic buckets from our co-op deli. I line them with those gigantic ziplocks, which I am pretty sure are food grade. That way if the grain/flour spills it isn't just loose in the bucket. I keep a lot of things in regular Rubbermaid totes (stacked up high) and so far have not ever had a problem with mice getting into those or the 5-gallon buckets, though we definitely have mice in the garage.
Are gamma lids worth buying? I use the regular lids and they are a bit of a pain to get off sometimes. Also, I wonder if the gamma lids are significantly more airtight?
About treats: This is another thing that I have learned the hard way, and mostly it has to do with assessing my own self-discipline, because even if I buy something "premium" and keep it mum, *I* still know where it is... If I buy a treat for DH, it has to be something I don't like at all. If I buy a treat for the kids, we have to eat it, all together, that very day, or it will get nibbled at by...er...someone. The good thing is that eating from pantry and imposing this kind of necessary self-discipline means we eat healthier. If it isn't in the house, we don't eat it, so I'm more careful about what I bring into the house.
Just before DH got laid off
I bought a case of wine. I never did that before, and it was an experiment to see if we could still drink it as infrequently as usual if I bought what for us amounts to a year's supply all at once. I am finding the my willpower on that front is strong, but DH says "If we have it, let's drink it!" and I think he's missed my point. I should have completely hidden it from him! I think we've gone through a bottle a week for the past three weeks, and that is way more than we ever ever ever drink. To my thinking, it would be better to pay full-price to buy the wine by the bottle once in awhile than to buy a case, even at a discount, and go through it faster. Eating from pantry means (for us) that the premium items are that much more tempting, and I'm still learning how best to ration them.
Another thought on treats - I find that if we have to pay full price for a treat, we are less likely to buy it, or less likely to buy more than one serving's worth (or a family's serving's worth). Since DH's layoff, if he wants to use his own pennies to buy himself chocolate or beer, he can - I'm not spending my precious resources buying that stuff for either of us.
About bugs: I heard that if you freeze your grains/flours for a few days, and then (ideally) thaw out for a day and freeze again for a couple of days, you kill all the buggies. Then you can remove from the freezer and store at room temperature. I think just one freezing will probably work, but to be on the safe side, two with a thaw between is prudent. The eggs are there, nearly invisible, and will hatch if the conditions are right. (Sorry to gross anyone out). But here is my diilemma - I bought 50# of brown rice flour yesterday, and my freezer space is PACKED FULL. It will take some verrrrrrry creative rearranging to get that brown rice flour frozen, if I can fit it at all - I'm not even sure. And just my luck, we're having a "warm spell" in the 30s this week, so the garage isn't really getting cold enough to do the trick on its own. If it was below 20F in there I'd assume the garage was cold enough, but...not so much in the 30s.
1. What have been your biggest challenges/downfalls/failures turned successes with stockpiling and bulk buying?
Learning to estimate how much we really use of things (and psychically anticipate what the kids will suddenly refuse to eat, LOL). I keep getting better at that while I go, but I have failed miserably at times.
Refusing to admit that we just aren't ever going to use up certain things, and hanging onto them way too long (but then gifting them to a friend feels good).
Underestimating how perishable some things are. I hate it when I buy too many bags of carrots on sale and they start getting slimy before we use them. (And do I ever learn? I just bought 6 5-lb bags of carrots on sale yesterday! I think I need more of those green bags to repackage them in.)
Learning to keep the stockpile off limits to pets. I lost an entire bushel of potatoes and two nearly-new bushel baskets last month. I will spare you the details.
Keeping our diet interesting while eating from pantry. Finding varied and acceptable recipes that use only or primarily the ingredients I consider standard in my pantry. The more recipes you find that can do this, the more successful you'll be at pantry-eating. Also I have learned over time that the more flexible you can be in your cooking, the easier you can eat from pantry. If you are stuck following recipes to the letter, you'll have to shop when you're out of an ingredient.
Not buying stuff simply because it is a good deal. That took a lot of practice for me. Unless it's exactly what we use and like, and I know we won't go through it too slowly or too quickly, I won't buy it in bulk.
Learning the hard way to NOT stock certain ingredients that might make me use up other spendy ingredients too fast. If I have cocoa or lemon juice in the house, I use up way too much maple syrup (spendy) making hot chocolate and lemonade. I stopped buying boxes of soymilk/ricemilk/almondmilk because I was making yummy mama-drinks with them like there was no tomorrow. We don't otherwise drink boxed milk and we can easily get by without it, so we do - but I used to buy a case when it was on sale, until I realized I was wasting that $$.
More below under treats...
2. Where do you keep your stash?
Garage (bins, buckets, and shelves), under the bed, clothes closets, laundry room, downstairs playroom (like a basement), behind the living room easy chair (kittycorner to the wall). The garage gets too cold in winter for some things.
3. Do you have a goal?
I want to learn how to rootcellar carrots and cabbage and work that into our pantry plan. Unfortunately, we don't have a spot in the house that has root cellar conditions. Our garage freezes in winter, our basement is musty/warm, the laundry room can get very cold (high 40s) but it's full of sunlight, and our bedroom walk-in closet is stuffed pretty tightly (also I'm not sure I'd want to keep buckets of sand in there, or cabbage).
Also I want to learn to contribute more from our garden to the pantry. More canning and freezing this year.
About storage: I get 5-gallon plastic buckets from our co-op deli. I line them with those gigantic ziplocks, which I am pretty sure are food grade. That way if the grain/flour spills it isn't just loose in the bucket. I keep a lot of things in regular Rubbermaid totes (stacked up high) and so far have not ever had a problem with mice getting into those or the 5-gallon buckets, though we definitely have mice in the garage.
Are gamma lids worth buying? I use the regular lids and they are a bit of a pain to get off sometimes. Also, I wonder if the gamma lids are significantly more airtight?
About treats: This is another thing that I have learned the hard way, and mostly it has to do with assessing my own self-discipline, because even if I buy something "premium" and keep it mum, *I* still know where it is... If I buy a treat for DH, it has to be something I don't like at all. If I buy a treat for the kids, we have to eat it, all together, that very day, or it will get nibbled at by...er...someone. The good thing is that eating from pantry and imposing this kind of necessary self-discipline means we eat healthier. If it isn't in the house, we don't eat it, so I'm more careful about what I bring into the house.
Just before DH got laid off
I bought a case of wine. I never did that before, and it was an experiment to see if we could still drink it as infrequently as usual if I bought what for us amounts to a year's supply all at once. I am finding the my willpower on that front is strong, but DH says "If we have it, let's drink it!" and I think he's missed my point. I should have completely hidden it from him! I think we've gone through a bottle a week for the past three weeks, and that is way more than we ever ever ever drink. To my thinking, it would be better to pay full-price to buy the wine by the bottle once in awhile than to buy a case, even at a discount, and go through it faster. Eating from pantry means (for us) that the premium items are that much more tempting, and I'm still learning how best to ration them.Another thought on treats - I find that if we have to pay full price for a treat, we are less likely to buy it, or less likely to buy more than one serving's worth (or a family's serving's worth). Since DH's layoff, if he wants to use his own pennies to buy himself chocolate or beer, he can - I'm not spending my precious resources buying that stuff for either of us.
About bugs: I heard that if you freeze your grains/flours for a few days, and then (ideally) thaw out for a day and freeze again for a couple of days, you kill all the buggies. Then you can remove from the freezer and store at room temperature. I think just one freezing will probably work, but to be on the safe side, two with a thaw between is prudent. The eggs are there, nearly invisible, and will hatch if the conditions are right. (Sorry to gross anyone out). But here is my diilemma - I bought 50# of brown rice flour yesterday, and my freezer space is PACKED FULL. It will take some verrrrrrry creative rearranging to get that brown rice flour frozen, if I can fit it at all - I'm not even sure. And just my luck, we're having a "warm spell" in the 30s this week, so the garage isn't really getting cold enough to do the trick on its own. If it was below 20F in there I'd assume the garage was cold enough, but...not so much in the 30s.
). We live in snow country, and, for example, last week, the roads were NOT safe for me to get out for a few days - they weren't horrible, but, I live on a slick hill (two, actually), and it was good to know I didn't *have* to go out to get food.
).
. I have to process them somehow (and I enjoy doing that), so, I inevitably end up with tons of jam, syrup, frozen sliced berries, etc. Or apples (dried! buttered! sauced!). Etc. They're also handy to have on hand if we get invited to someone else's house or something (I come bearing jams!).
)
I've enjoyed reading this thread. I build my stockpile mostly a bit at a time. I hate dealing with large quantities of food, but I do like getting things at a good price. And I do a lot of cooking.
