why do you keep a storecupboard/stocked freezer etc

Trinny

Hi There

"The reason i do this is because we have in the past been very short of money and i never knew if i could afford the shopping that week, this was only just over a year ago before we gradually sorted things out" (Quote)

This is our experience too. We have had debts and no money for food in the past. Now doing ok - but it left me with an irrational fear and the need to hoard food - buying every whoops item and stashing it just in case. Then i found MSE and now try to buy what i need instead.

Grocery challenge, storecupboard and freezer inventories have really helped. We now try to only buy if its what we need. monthly spend is dropping bit by bit - but its been a tough habit to break.

If you know how bad it can be - its so temptin to hoard just in case. We now try to use the freezer(s) :eek: (yes we were that bad) to store home grown veges and foraged fruit for use all year.

Trin

trin

Pitlanepiglet

Baileys_Babe wrote: »

I keep a store cupboard for many reasons:

• being able to cook and bake
• I find it cheaper to buy in bulk (ie 25kg of sugar)
• convenient as I'm not always able to get to the shops
• being able to advantage to offers

I'd echo this. Plus our nearest supermarket (Tesco) is 5 miles away and its rubbish. It's a smallish store that rarely has any bargains and half the time has empty shelves.

So I do a monthly online shop from the "big store" which is 30 miles away. So I try to work a month in hand so that if something doesn't arrive on my order I don't have to order again just to get what was missed.

It also means that if the poo hits the fan financially for whatever reason we can cut food spending for a month with little problem.

elisamoose

THIRZAH wrote: »

I like to keep a good store cupboard. We had a couple of weeks last winter when it was difficult to get the car out and the pavements were solid ice so I could do very little shopping so my stores came in very useful then.

Also I married in the mid seventies when we did sometimes find it difficult to get various things due to strikes. Sugar was certainly in short supply at one time and then there was the lorry drivers strike and the supermarkets did start to run short of tins etc.

Only a few years ago there was a blockade of petrol depots and the petrol stations ran out of fuel. The situation was resolved before there were shortages in the shops but it could happen so I like to keep well stocked up.

But that was just because my MiL bought it all (according to my DH).She had a garage full of toilet roll and sugar for years in the 1970's!

lindseykim13

I keep stocked up lately because i'm due to go into labour any day and want to make sure we have everything in to last a few weeks. i will keep this up though as it has the added advantage of not having to spend 4x as much in the local co-op on loo roll etc if we run out. So although some say it's dead money etc it actually saves us money as i used to always run out of stuff before getting round to a supermarket shop.

If my cupboards get too empty i have a nasty habbit of getting a take away, now always have some sort of tinned meal available so saves money there too.

henbane

Hi
What an interesting thread!
I am a compulsive horder but put all the food to good use. I spent over a year getting used to cooking from what I had rather than starting with a recipe and getting in the ingredients - it meant that I could hold food stocks of the items I knew I needed. Spent a glorious few months cooking with all the things I'd decided I wouldn't need anymore so they're gone. The kitchen shelves are therefore light, all the basics in good quantity but no more "fancy stuff".

Being an allotment holder I start the year emptying out my 3 freezers - (there is only me). You get to be very inventive to use up everything before a great defrost in readyness for May when they start to fill up again. I have enought fruit to eat some every day, lots of green veg and prepared root veg as well as my batch cooked meals, home made bread and cakes.
Being out of work means money is very tight and if I had to buy in all my food I would be eating very poorly after I've paid the bills, fed the cats and the chickens. But my stores mean I can eat a good vegetarian mostly diet, good food prepared by me and when the money really runs out, I can cut the shopping drastically to cut spending. And it also means if I'm ill or the weather is very bad then I don't have to go out shopping.

And there's all my preserves, pickles and chutneys, dried foods, lots of dried beans, onions, garlic, potatoes, pumpkins and marrows. And always lots of lovely eggs from my "girls".

I'd be lost without my stores even though they've overflowed from the kitchen into the hall and living room!

Henbane

badkitti

Freezers are more economical if they are full too, so its worth keeping that up. I'd love a chest freeezer so I could bulk cook more and also get lovely farmer's market bargains like a whole lamb sectioned up. I always have to squeeze stuff into my freezer.

lizzyb1812

Great thread!

I've been thinking about this recently too. I've got a freezer and cupboards full of stuff bought on "special" - ie on offer, whoopsied, couponed, etc.

But now I'm struggling to find room in the freezer for the blackberries I'm picking and it's made me think about why I need these stores. And I've started to use them up instead of shopping for stuff. I'm still going to take advantage of the bargains I see but I'm trying hard to remind myself that offers get repeated over and over again and that whoopsied stuff turns up all the time. And that using up stores now saves my cash and space for Christmas things. Plus I get the space to store my free blackberries and the massive harvest from my apple tree.

I do like to think that if I fancy baking a cake or making a favourite dinner I'll have the stuff in, but I don't need the ingredients to make twelve, just one or two. These days the shops are always open and filled with money off offers so I'm trying to shop for basics just before they run out.

I don't think I've got excessive stocks but recently did a freezer/cupboard inventory and found that I've got the ingredients for about 50 main meals! (that's meals for both of us, not portions). I'm having great fun using up my overstocked stuff.

It's about striking a balance really isn't it? Space/funds/personal economic situation/personal history etc etc. Ultimately the right level of stock is the level you are comfortable with having.

Lizzyb

ChocClare

Waggle_Dancer wrote: »

:eek: I'd never get in the cellar! I wonder what a years supply of water looks like?

Yes, actually now I think of it, I think with water they say to start with a fortnight's supply. You need a gallon per day per family member. So for me, DH, DS and DD we'd need 56 gallons of water to last us just for the two weeks :eek:

We do actually have in our garden 3 huge... er... things (sorry if I'm being too technical here). They're square, made of plastic banded with metal and are about four feet cubed - oh forget it, they look like this and they hold 1000 litres of water. We use 'em for the garden, but I guess in an emergency you COULD fill them with drinking water...

property.advert

I know all the reasons why I did do it but maybe why I have what I have now after only a few months back in the UK is worth my writing.

Asda had a 4 for £1 on those nice Napolitana tinned tomatoes so I looked at the expiry date and thought about how many I used in that time. I have more cupboards than spare money and Asda is literally 200m from my place.

I try to think about total cost ownership or total cost over time. It is a neat fix but requires you to be disciplined. Most deals offer long term gains but short terms expenditure. If you can balance those in your mind and spending, you will realise that you "win" in the long term. If you think pay day to pay day or giro to giro, then no, you cannot benefit.

Essentially, you are fixing your future costs but for only a small item. Do it enough times for enough items, then you lower your overall costs.

With a full larder of essential or frozen items, you can eat for free to cover an unforeseen problem but you cannot do so forever. Do not underestimate the cost of replenishing from nothing, as I had to do a few months ago.

Stephen_Leak

All of the above reasons and ... illness, unemployment, fire, flood, ice and snow, Acts of God, civil unrest, nuclear/biological/chemical war, environmental disasters, earthquakes, tidal waves, meteorites, falling space debris, alien invasion (you never know, they may be vulnerable to something in Stardrops), asteroid impact ...