Who doesn't have a stock cupboard

suelizab

recently bought a chest freezer to go in the brick-built garden shed as the kitchen one holds only a small amount . Have had a joiner in to build wall to wall wardrobe with plenty of large , deep , cube -shape recesses . Going to store dry n tin goods in all of these behind clothes/bedroom stuff .

Fishtea

I've only just joined this forum and never been on one before - so bear with me.....
I'm all for getting together our immediate needs for when the SHTF but guys, we also have to start looking further down the line. By getting prepared now for resilience we will be much better off. Don't think just about "me" think about "us", your local community; people you can share skills and resources with.
It's a big topic and to get together with like-minded people is possibly the easiest way forward. If you don't already know about Permaculture then it may be worth investigating. It's not the only route but it inspires me and gives me hope. There is a Permacultue association: AND there are courses happening all over the country. I know of a two week Permaculture course starting very soon near Bangor, north Wales run by Sector39. You meet great people and usually make life-long friends and acquaintances. Good luck

Butterfly_Brain

Fishtea wrote: »

I've only just joined this forum and never been on one before - so bear with me.....
I'm all for getting together our immediate needs for when the SHTF but guys, we also have to start looking further down the line. By getting prepared now for resilience we will be much better off. Don't think just about "me" think about "us", your local community; people you can share skills and resources with.
It's a big topic and to get together with like-minded people is possibly the easiest way forward. If you don't already know about Permaculture then it may be worth investigating. It's not the only route but it inspires me and gives me hope. There is a Permacultue association: AND there are courses happening all over the country. I know of a two week Permaculture course starting very soon near Bangor, north Wales run by Sector39. You meet great people and usually make life-long friends and acquaintances. Good luck

Have a look on the SHTF thread we are all of the same mindset as you on there x

xMonsoonx

I always keep a stash of at least 2 -3 weeks of meals and ignore sell by dates on cans. I can not understand why people do not keep a store cupboard, even if it just a few own brand tins and some pasta?

As a child my mother always kept a good store cupboard and grew a lot of soft fruits, veggies and salad bits and considering how badly off we were (I remember my mother having the same £1.80 in her purse for two weeks at once point), I can not praise her enough for keeping us kids feed with healthy, warm and filling grub.

WantAnOrange

I am trying to build up my store cupboard but it seems the more I buy, the more they eat! Also, a very tight budget means we really can only afford to buy what we need for the months so there's no money left over to buy tins and stuff to add to the cupboard.

I do buy flour, potatoes, pasta, rice, tea and sugar in bulk so we could always have boiled rice to stop us from starving and a cuppa tea at least. To be fair, I bought a massive sack of rice in January and it is only just about to run out. That has fed a family of four, plus I am a childminder so often have a couple extra little ones to feed about 3-4 nights a week and we use the rice for sensory play too. I have the subscribe and save from Amazon for flour which gets delivered every 3 months and means I have make my own bread/cakes/biscuits/crackers etc so there is always something that can go in the packed lunches. Amazon is very good for bulk buying dried food like lentils.

It's the tins that get used very quickly. I might put aside a jar for change for a few months and then use it to do a big online shop for tins/jars etc.

I grow my own courgettes and when they are growing like mad through August I make courgette and lemon bread. One courgette makes 2 loaves, so we have one for supper on Sunday night and one goes in the freezer. I always batch cook and freeze portions. My baby is due in February so I would like to have lots of home-made ready meals in there for those nights when breast feeding just goes on and on and on.......

I grow my own chillies and garlic, and herbs which are easy to store and add flavour to otherwise boring rice and pasta.

We go through ridiculous quantities of beans and tinned tomatoes so never manage to stock up on these.

nursemaggie

I had a look at this site to see what all the fuss about a store cupboard is. My kitchen has four cupboards. It is fill with a few plates, dishes, cups, and glasses and pans. I always have some rice, flour, occasionally sugar, tea gets used when we have visitors never buy more than 40, always end up throwing some away, coffee past noodles, things likegravy granules, tins of beans, soup and an odd jar to make a quick meal. I never run out of things like eggs, chicken fillets and mince I can always throw together something if visitors turned up but I don't think I have had an unexpected visitor in 30 years.

What is the point in falling over a box of groceries in the living room there is no where to put anything in this house the four cupboards in my kitchen are the sum of the storage in this house and it is too small to put in basic furniture. No outhouses, loft inaccessible over the stairs and the hatch just big enough for a small head.

I have experienced the water emergency. Floods flooded our local water treatment works. The first two days was bad as people fought over bottled water it was just greed. The problem lasted for 6 weeks. I went to the 90+ year old couple in the street to see if I could help.

He said, "come and look in the little bedroom". It was full to the ceiling with bottled water everyone who knew them even casually had brought them water in the first few hours.

Bowsers were on every street corner and bottled water in every car park in the city. The whole country was supplying us. Five years later most people had at least a weeks drinking water still in the garage if they had one. I rather think I would struggle to store more than a couple of bottles now.

Now some cash I do keep, having been admitted to hospital last year in an emergency for a major op on the day I would have gone shopping and to the bank. My son left school the day before my emergency I had £10 in my purse which he used to visit me twice for the week I was in hospital and he lived out of the freezer. It was £5 return on the train plus a very long walk to the hospital. He could not come to fetch me home and the hospital could not understand how a 19 year old could be without money. If they had kept me any longer he would have starved. I now keep money locked in a secure box which I always swore I would not.

The banks, utilities and everything else must have contingency plans if the internet broke down. Have you ever know a supermarket to stay closed a full 24 hours after a power cut. No they want your money and they will find a way round it quickly.

BTW my mother always kept tinned stuff in in case. There was always tins of steak in there but I don't think I ever tasted tinned steak until my late teens. We don't use it and I will never buy it.

nmlc

Morning

I've read this thread with interest - there's so many different opinions regarding whether having a store cupboard is beneficial or not. I have quite a well stocked store cupboard and freezers. My mum came from a family of 9 children (1 passed away in infancy) and they lived in the country in a 3 bed council house. My grandad was a farm labourer, and also a lorry driver, driving the farm's lorry to take produce to where it needed to go. Nan was an excellent cook, and made all her own jams etc, baking, bread and cooking meals from scratch. She always said whilst you're working/have some money when you shop buy a couple of extra tins/packets or buy on offer to build up your store cupboard - my mum has always done this and passed it on to us children. Under normal circumstances I could go a week without the need to buy anything other than fresh milk and bread (have been using up supplies as am off work at the moment with my leg in plaster after a fall). I can always remember my nan telling us that when she and grandad where young and they had all the family at home money was always tight, so meat was scarce. She would make a huge Yorkshire pudding in a big baking tray, and this would be portioned up and served first on it's own - as something to fill everyone up, then they were served the meat and veg. They were quite lucky in the fact that the farmers in those days did give their workers some produce at the end of the week, but grandad always grew fruit and veg at home. Nan used to do fruit picking in the season, strawberries, then all the other different fruits, to plums, apples, pears etc, luckily we live in a rural area where there's a huge amount of vegetable and fruit grown still today.

I wouldn't like to not have a store cupboard but am fortunate that I do have a kitchen where there's quite a few cupboards to store items in.

nmlc x