why do you keep a storecupboard/stocked freezer etc

Bronnie

[QUOTE=property.advert;25635329

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.[/QUOTE]


But with respect, you're not eating 'for free', you're 'spending' what you previously invested.

Although I do understand why you might want to 'invest' in this way, in the first place.

OrkneyStar

I don't stock-pile as such, but like to have well stocked cupboards/freezer.
I have two main reasons:
1. I am a spontaneous cook who likes to adapt recipes.
2. We live on a small island where deliveries often come late in the day, and sometimes can even be held up by cancelled sea crossings etc!
As for alien invasion type scenarios, well who says Aliens won't be wonderful cooks, shop owners etc ?
x

frosty

We have always had a store cupboard,its saved us a lot over the years.When our sons were small my husband was made redundant 3 times in 18 months and times were hard.If I had not had the store cupboard and freezer full we would of been very hungry.Even though they have grown up now,I still stock up on bargains.We had to call the vet out to one of our ferrets,they have a cage that we have built inside one of our large sheds and that leads to a large play area for them.When the vet walked into the shed he looked around and said "Oh my god its like being in Asda",we have about a 3 year supply of dog and cat food,this is from the Asda offer,they had packs of 6 cans of cat food for 50p,offers like these save us a fortune.When our local Tesco opened they would take lots of coupons off your shopping,so I was paying a few pounds for a trolley full of food,so I stocked up tins and dried food so my store cupboard has not cost a lot of money.We could easily last 12 months without going to the supermarket.
I am glad I have kept up my storecupboard because my husband has just had a letter from work saying the recession is now filtering through the oil industry and they might have to make some people redundant.

Primrose

I like to feel in control of my destiny. Having a good food/freezer storecupboard is part of that strategy. My early childhood was spent during the war and I remember seeing my mother constantly struggle trying to get food which was not always available. My grandmother raised a large family during the depression after the first world war when her husband was unemployed and she never threw ANYTHING away. When she died, her upstairs wardrobes were crammed full of rusty food tins hoarded for about 30 years, and even matchsticks were saved in a large metal biscuit tin for firelighting & kindling, even though in her latter days she'd had a self-igniting gas fire installed. I guess in my case it's an inherited trait!

carolinosourus

I like to keep stocked up as my mother did (still does even though I'm living in London and my younger brother is at uni), money was VERY tight when I was younger and my mum used to stock up so we'd always be well-fed. I remember there was half a cow from our local butchers in the freezer for ages!

I think for me after living through that it's psychological, I start to get very anxious whenever the freezer/fridge starts looking a bit empty, even though we have a variety of shops and a Morrisons just round the corner, my BF doesn't get it at all! I personally think it's just good sense in case something (don't know what) was to happen. Having recently read The Road by Cormac McCarthy I think it's made me even more paranoid about stocking up

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

alien invasion (you never know, they may be vulnerable to something in Stardrops)

:rotfl:

geordie_joe

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

alien invasion (you never know, they may be vulnerable to something in Stardrops)

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

Well if anything is going to clean aliens out of the kitchen, my money is on Stardrops.

23rdspiral

i'm in my 20s but definately have that 'what if' stock-up / war time mentality!

i turned the cupboard under stairs into a pantry and have an old wooded filing cabinet next to it which people presume is full of paperwork ect but is actually housing for large bags of dried goods! i shop at a wholefood store 20miles away every 6 months and stock up on barley, split dried peas, rice, tvp ect... i get panniky if the peas are getting low.

i dont have a huegely full fridge and thanks to MSE am now eating things up before they go off and am shopping more effectivly. however, for peace of mind i do need to know where the next meal is coming from (or perhaps more accuralty the next dozen meals)!!

Kiwisaver_2

I've found myself getting more and more like my Grandmother as I get older, her house was packed to the rafters with all the stuff she bought on special offer. I think a lot of us have the feast or famine mentality whereby we need to feel like we have something to fall back on in leaner times or that we would have something to offer people who turn up unexpectedly (not that anyone ever does)

I do have a good excuse, as live in a country with some extreme weather patterns, fragile infrastructure and earthquake risks. So Government advise is to 'Get Thru' and have enough supplies, food and water in the house to keep you going for at least ten days, being their estimation of how long it could take for you to be rescued or some semblance of normality to be resumed. Only this week we were on high alert for Tsunami following the earthquakes around the Pacific. We had a terrible thunderstorm that took out our power on Tuesday night.

So I keep a well stocked pantry of staples and rather than have heaps of the same things I tend to keep a 'spare' and work on a replacement policy of just restocking the things as they get used.

The things I simply can't live without, such as coffee, I only buy on special offers and do start to panic when I'm getting low. I'm currently waiting for coffee to be on special offer again; last time I bought ten packs and now I'm down to ONLY two, it's very close to the wire and I'll be sick if I have to pay full price. :eek:

Primrose

Do you think we were all squirrels in a previous life, storing away our nuts for winter and hard times? :rotfl:

If ever we were to decide to move house, I think we would need at least five years' notice to run down a hudge storecupboard, two freezers and a cupboard full of home-made jams and marmalades. Now that we're in our pensionable years, I beginning to think we should start now. When we pop our clogs I can just imagine come poor soul having to clear our cupboards and exclaiming "My God, come and look at this! Twenty packets of xxx - and they're all out of date or "What on earth did they want with ten packs of toilet rolls - did they eat prunes and Ex Lax all day?" When my grandmother's house had to be cleared in the 1960's there were about 50 tins of peas dating back to 1930's.(Remember the ones with the little running chicken logo on them?) Now that really WAS hoarding. But what caused the biggest puzzle was "Why on earth did she need a dozen bundles of those long rubber spouts which you used to put on the end of taps ?

ChocClare

Primrose wrote: »

Do you think we were all squirrels in a previous life, storing away our nuts for winter and hard times? :rotfl:

I think food storage for winter at least is ingrained in every creature under heaven, to be honest. In fact, it's only now that we have instant access to supermarkets that it has become anything out of the ordinary to "squirrel things away", if you think about it.

I remember reading the "Little House on the Prairie" books when I was younger and being horrified at the sheer VOLUME of work that the parents had to do to make sure they had enough to eat over the winter - and, in one of the books, they were snowed in all winter and were subsisting on thinner and thinner soup and spending all day twisting hay into plaits to keep the fire going so they didn't just freeze to death.

When I lived in Paris, I shared a flat with a Ukranian girl; this was pre-perestroika, and she had had to leave her husband and 3-year-old daughter in Kiev to be allowed to come to France to teach for a year. I can remember bumping into her in the fruit and veg section of our (not very big) local Monoprix a few days after she arrived: she had tears pouring down her face and literally did not know what to do at the thought that she could buy anything she wanted. She said in Kiev in the winter you could get bread, potatoes and beetroot easily. Everything else you had to queue long and hard for: if she heard they were selling oranges in a shop up the road, by the time she got there there would be queues snaking round the block and every last orange would be gone. And not only fresh fruit - she went home in the holidays laden with tins of pineapple which neither her husband or daughter had ever tasted.

I imagine that many people still remember rationing and that even those who don't will have inherited something of that mentality from parents or grandparents. We tend to take it so much for granted that the shelves will always be full and that food will always be as cheap as it is now (and it is much cheaper now in real terms than it's ever been, even if we all moan about prices!).

So maybe we hoarders aren't as mad as we seem - and anyway, we'll be the ones laughing when we see off those pesky aliens with our bottles of Stardrops :rotfl: