Who doesn't have a stock cupboard

Popperwell

Lunar_Eclipse wrote: »

I don't really, but am a frequent food shopper (every few days) so it's not really necessary. I usually have 2-4 cartons of tomatoes, tinned tuna, a jar of pesto and 1-4 tins of baked beans in at any one time (depending on whether I've just been shopping and bought a 4-pack!)

I currently have zero pasta, rice and potatoes in the house, nor are they on my shopping list for tomorrow, but I do have a few bags of flour so could make bread for a few weeks if I needed to. I only have the next two nights' evening meals in hand.

Beyond a sack of rice, tinned beans and tomatoes for true disaster type emergencies, I don't want to have lots of food (or anything else!) in the house. Less is more for me.

That's fine at least you have something to fall back on...and a couple of days to play with. You may not have the space or money to store lots of food/household goods...and you may(allowing for the fridge/freezer failing)have quite a good store of food in there to play with...

You can do all kinds of simple but varied meals with the ingredients you have...and if you are also eating bread, poatatoes, fish, some meat and fruit. Possibly cereal and milk etc...You'll come to no harm...:)

GreyQueen

Morning all.

Pops, if you were prepared to consider moving, which is a lot to think about on top of your recent bereavement, there are various options available.

Thre's transfer (registering for transfer to another HA/ council property), depending on how your local authority organise this. It varies, you'd need to ask them.

Or mutual exchange, where you find someone to swop with. Or transfer into sheltered accomodation. I hope I won't have caused offense by suggesting the latter but 55 is the minimum qualifying age for sheltered accomodation in Provincial City so it's not just an option for the frail elderly, but for others who are vulnerable by reasons of illhealth etc.

The general advice given to the bereaved is that you shouldn't make major lifestyle changes within a year of your loss but you've been posting about it so it's obviously something you've considered, so I thought I'd mention it. I hope I've caused no offense.

Re Value brands etc disappearing, the lady who blogs as frugalincornwall mentioned on her blog about a year ago that she thought that the bargain brands would start to disappear/ cost more, and suggested people stock up and within weeks I saw that she was correct. We're now experiencing another dip in people's incomes and I think that the retailers cannot get the manufacturers to deliver to their low prices.

You also have to sell a helluva lot of 4p mushy peas to pay your overheads. I guess that the Basics/ Value ranges were fine for supermarkets when only a small % of the shopping population bought them, but now that more and more of us are heading down-brand from necessity, they are becoming a drag on profits.

That's my two'pennorth, anyroad.:)

I'm quietly adding to my stock-cupboard, but only stuff that I actually eat, and it will be rotated into the daily diet. I keep a list of what I have as it is stored in various nooks and crannies and not all visible at one time. I find it helpful.

Popperwell

GQ No offence taken. I hope to stay for at least a year and even if things get tight I hope I can stay put...I can manage quite well here and I am so near the shops and it'scntral to everything...

What you say about value priced brands seems to be coming true. I don't mind if they keep reducing the price of well known brands...

Annoyingly I splashed out on biscuits costing 99p last week, this week they are on a BOGOF offer...

Last week I bought some limited edition Fruit Loops cereal full price, this week it's half price.

I seem to miss the bargains...:p

GreyQueen

Popperwell wrote: »

GQ No offence taken. I hope to stay for at least a year and even if things get tight I hope I can stay put...I can manage quite well here and I am so near the shops and it'scntral to everything...

What you say about value priced brands seems to be coming true. I don't mind if they keep reducing the price of well known brands...

Annoyingly I splashed out on biscuits costing 99p last week, this week they are on a BOGOF offer...

Last week I bought some limited edition Fruit Loops cereal full price, this week it's half price.

I seem to miss the bargains...:p

Thanks, hun.

Re bargains, sometimes you just get a run of just-missed-the-offer luck and it stinks! It happened to me when I stocked up on Basics pasta at 20p a 500g packet and within weeks it was down to 12p a packet, before shooting up again to the 30p mark. Boy, was I cross!

Your mojo will come back for the bargain hunting.

PipneyJane

prepareathome wrote: »

Tinks what you found is so important, its no use having lots of food in your store cupboard but none of it is what you like. You should only ever buy what you and your family will eat. Nothing worse than redundancy and you have to live out of the store cupboard and you dread your meals as you dislike the food you have in - in times of stress having nice things to eat is very, very important for morale. I am not talking about cakes and biscuits but actual meals they should be enjoyed so no matter how hard things are you can sit down and actually have a few moments of pleasure away from the awful day to day living on reduced income and trying to find work. Also again in winter and you find you are stuck in, having a nice meal to look forward to breaks up the day and makes it much more bearable.

Many people go to survivalist sites of which there are many and mainly american and what do they find, list of foods they advise you to have in like lots of wheat, dried milk, etc - now unless you totally adore wheat you are going to get really sick of it very quickly, and also you have to buy mills in to grind it etc. Ok if you live in the middle of nowhere and are going to have to make your own bread for a year but not really for the average person. The last thing you want to do in the middle of an emergency is start grinding wheat.

Buying what you like - even if you are someone who only cooks from scratch and likes only fresh - can make all the difference to you mental health during these times.

I know many have come on here and said they won't bother with a store cupboard as they are surrounded by shops but two years ago here, we most unusually had a bad winter and in March it was so bad that the whole city closed down for 3 days - council offices closed, DWPs, shops, supermarkets, factories everything closed as the roads even with gritting were impassable and deliveries could't get to shops nor could the staff and in the local paper ( which my hubby delivers and it was printed and he delivered it) afterwards, there were lots of reports of people who had been without food for a day or so as they would pop out every day in buy in the food for that day and with no shops being open they couldn't do it. Even the small shops who did manage to open soon sold out of what food they had and could not restock as warehouses were not open. People were amazed such a big city could be brought to a standstill by heavy snow, it had never ever happened here before. Those who remembered said even the three day week in the '70s was better as at least they knew shops would be closed so they did buy in extra.

So even if your store cupboard only contains enough for a week it is better to have it than not. Someone did post here that they were one of those people who never bothered stocking up but them the riots last year closed the shops by them and as they said even if they were open they would have been to scared to go out.

So you never know what might stop you from being able to pop out.

Right I better get off my soap box:o sorry

Can I join you on your soap box, please?

Even when I lived in a flat, I had a decent pantry. When I bought the flat, it had virtually no storage. (DH and I traded looks when we walked into the kitchen for the first time, wondering how the previous owner stored anything.) One thing that kitchen did have was a tall broom cupboard with one, half-depth shelf inside. That became my pantry.

We added full depth shelves. I had a length of conti-board shelving cut into sections in Homebase. To work out the shelf heights, we started at the bottom, decided that was where the cereal would go so inserted a box of cereal and positioned the shelf above it. Once that shelf's brackets were screwed in and the shelf put temporarily into position, we decided what would go on the next shelf up and repeated the process all the way up, removing the "temporary shelf" each time so that we had room to screw in the brackets.

I had more food storage in that flat than I did in this house for the first 7 years we lived here (oh how I missed that pantry!). It was only after we ripped out 70% of the kitchen to do building work that I could get decent storage in there. And all of it is shelving from Ikea.

Fruball

Saver0811 wrote: »

I am so glad I have my stock of 2 litre Pepsi bottles full of water...



The water out of the tap is not even a trickle, clean, but so low water pressure.

Thanks for posting that - Hopefully people will see that it is worth having a stash of water 'just in case'.

adelight

GreyQueen wrote: »

The general advice given to the bereaved is that you shouldn't make major lifestyle changes within a year of your loss but you've been posting about it so it's obviously something you've considered, so I thought I'd mention it. I hope I've caused no offense.

Re Value brands etc disappearing, the lady who blogs as frugalincornwall mentioned on her blog about a year ago that she thought that the bargain brands would start to disappear/ cost more, and suggested people stock up and within weeks I saw that she was correct. We're now experiencing another dip in people's incomes and I think that the retailers cannot get the manufacturers to deliver to their low prices.

You also have to sell a helluva lot of 4p mushy peas to pay your overheads. I guess that the Basics/ Value ranges were fine for supermarkets when only a small % of the shopping population bought them, but now that more and more of us are heading down-brand from necessity, they are becoming a drag on profits.

That's my two'pennorth, anyroad.:)

I'm quietly adding to my stock-cupboard, but only stuff that I actually eat, and it will be rotated into the daily diet. I keep a list of what I have as it is stored in various nooks and crannies and not all visible at one time. I find it helpful.

I love her blog! I posted about it on the OS board this time last year when I got wind through my old job of major rebranding and marketing of value ranges. I'm not sure if anyone took my advice but I hope they did as prices have gone up with the fancy new packaging.

I had some protein powder delivered for my store "cupboard" (draws, nooks, crannies!) today. It's not everyones cup of tea but it's cheap, portable, keeps well and is good for smugging protein/calories into drinks/soups. It works out at 20p for a portion containing 20-25g protein depending on whether it's pea, soy or milk protein. 200 portions takes up very little storage space. I'm also amazed how little space my 5kg bags of rye berries take up!
I'm a bit annoyed because whilst I did get free delivery and a discount yesterday, today it's buy 3 get 1 free!
Next week is the last time I'll be home in the week for deliveries for a very long time so I've been doing all my online shopping and stocking up at once.

Calluna

PipneyJane wrote: »

Can I join you on your soap box, please?

Even when I lived in a flat, I had a decent pantry. When I bought the flat, it had virtually no storage. (DH and I traded looks when we walked into the kitchen for the first time, wondering how the previous owner stored anything.) One thing that kitchen did have was a tall broom cupboard with one, half-depth shelf inside. That became my pantry. [End Quote]

When we designed (& built) our house my deal breaker was a proper larder (& OH wanted a double height conservatory big enough for a large banana tree)
I was happy to have a small bedroom as long as I had lots of space for storing home-grown/made stuff
Now I'm having to find as much space as possible on our boat -

Calluna

Popperwell

Needs sorting out but my store of food...the last is the pantry where the cereals are. The milk will soon be moved as the dates are up by the end of August and I have more room in the panty for storage...

Not the best images in the world but it gives an idea how I am doing...I still have kitchen cupboards with soup and other tinned goods.

I may move things around yet and exchange some things and swop them around. Nor does this show the store of bottled water, soft drinks or the contents of the fridge/freezer. If you click on the images you can make them larger.


http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-SMrlMBL17dA/UBSE6epuW6I/AAAAAAAAAdY/956dSZfidko/s1600/P1010124.JPG

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ZJrXZv4z5Hs/UBSE6maVStI/AAAAAAAAAdg/5ytAHWkSDCc/s1600/P1010125.JPG

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7KnO6BeAUMM/UBSE69nZrrI/AAAAAAAAAdw/xi9KGa7bc-0/s1600/P1010128.JPG

The other day we wondered if the budget range of goods were being phased out but the water and the tinned new potatoes were back in stock and some of the goods in my store now go right into 2015.

fuddle

pops you have more than me! I saw your lager Store envy here.

What I do, when I have everything (have you got everything now?) Is calm down with my buying. So, as I have a nice store of everything I need (2 in store and 1 in use) when the one that is in use runs out and I have to get the one from the store I add to my shopping list that I have to replace. This has reduced my monthly shop drastically. I'm well on target this month for coming under budget and going to reduce my budget next month.

I see a store as a way to save money on shopping, as well as preparing. Hope that you can pull back soon pops and see some real money saving with the groceries. I fear Aldi is going to be your haven when it opens

Does your stocks allow to feel a sense of calm for the future? I hope so.