How do you manage your store cupboard?

BEAT_THE_DEBT

Hi first of all is it good to keep a store cupboard or just only buy and use what you need?
How do you manage to get a store cupboard? Do you buy one thing each week then rotate and use the old one and but another? It is probably simple but I can't get my head around it? Thanks

GreyQueen

BEAT_THE_DEBT wrote: »

Hi first of all is it good to keep a store cupboard or just only buy and use what you need?
How do you manage to get a store cupboard? Do you buy one thing each week then rotate and use the old one and but another? It is probably simple but I can't get my head around it? Thanks

If you don't keep a storecupboard of sorts, you can be left in the lurch by unexpected events. Examples could be an illness/ injury/ car breakdown/ family crisis which kept you from shopping. Some event which kept the shops from restocking, such as bad weather, a tanker drivers' strike, local closure of roads to your area. You could have a personal financial crisis with your bank account not being accessible and, unless you keep cash, not be able to shop for a day or two. Also, if you run a storecupboard, you can surf the sales cycles, such as stocking up on items like bakery necessities when they come on 3 of 2 or similar.

Or you could simply have unexpected extras in your household who need feeding. We all have some degree of storecupboard, I expect you have condiments and things like that, you don't buy salt, pepper and vinegar on a weekly basis?

Firstly, if you are going to run a storecupboard, you need to think about what you eat which is shelf-stable (ie not requiring freezing or refridgeration) and which is stuff you eat anyway. You do need to pay some attention to best-before dates, although not as much as the canners and packagers would have you believe. And you need to think about where you will be keeping your items, and checking that its somewhere not to hot/ cold/ prone to freezing/ accessible to vermin and pests.

Other than that, it's just FIFO (first in, first out) and it's also handy to have a written record of what you have, to assist in meal-planning.

Having a store-cupboard is time-saving and money-saving, as you don't have to run out to get something, which then results in a dozen other somethings being bought at the same time.

I have a good storecupboard in a small flat. Tinned goods live under the bed on wheeled trollies. The narrow double wall unit in the kitchen which is my food cupboard is restocked from the other storage area, which is itself restocked from keenly-priced items as and when I see them.

HappyMJ

BEAT_THE_DEBT wrote: »

Hi first of all is it good to keep a store cupboard or just only buy and use what you need?
How do you manage to get a store cupboard? Do you buy one thing each week then rotate and use the old one and but another? It is probably simple but I can't get my head around it? Thanks

You've got to use it...and enjoy it. There's no point buying in food for an emergency when you don't use it and don't like it. If you don't like something then don't buy it..there's plenty of other things to buy.

I have a plan but I never follow it. The plan is to have at least a weeks worth of food that can be stored at all times. It's not the fresh food that I buy every week...I'm talking about tins and packets. You've got to work through it though as most of it only has a shelf life of 1 year. I have a tonne of rice (well 10kg of it). Loads of dried pastas, tinned veg, tinned fruits, some tinned meats -corned beef, pork and ham, tuna, sardines-...loads more. Only problem is you've actually got to eat it and turn your store cupboard over replacing it regularly.

nuatha

There's lots of different approaches, I use two.
Firstly I'll buy one or two extra of things we use regularly in order that as an item is used there is an immediate replacement or two. Secondly I bulk buy when things are on offer, I don't generally buy more than we can reasonably use before the best before or use by date, but I usually buy case quantities if the price is advantageous (it helps I have access to wholesalers and Costco).

This approach takes space and organisation - similar items need to be stored together and stored in such a way that you use the shortest dated stock first. When you buy new stock, check its date against your existing stock and store it so your shortest date stock is used first. (The standard advice is to rotate your new stock to the back and keep the old stock at the front, generally this works, but once in a while you'll find the items you've just bought have a shorter code)

I've been doing this a while, so I've worked out what we generally use and in what sort of quantities and I've organised the space to do this. I know we will use around 1kg of flour a week (unless I have a baking spree) so find it much cheaper to buy 25kg sacks from a mill than bags from a supermarket. (I don't buy self raising any more, but mix my own baking powder and add that instead)
My other half is fond of Heinz Tomato soup and will regularly have that for a lunch at work during the winter, so buying two cases of 24 was a no brainer when it worked out at 36p a tin last summer (its now around 90p a tin or 3 for £2).

HTH

SailorSam

Except for fruit and milk i've probably gat enough stuff in the freezer and cupboards to last for months without worrying that i'm not going to make something to eat.
I don't rotate as much as i should, i promise myself to get more organised.

BEAT_THE_DEBT

Wow! Thanks all for your really helpful advice. Would you keep frozen? like chicken and mince?

BEAT_THE_DEBT

So far I have brown rice. Pasta, tin toms ,tom puree,kidney beans and spaghetti. I need to add tuna as dh uses loads!

Suffolk_lass

If you are considering building in a store-cupbord of standby provisions, I think the key things to remember are to not long-term store stuff for the benefit of Justin Case (he might come round but unless you live in the remotest area there are usually options).

Secondly, focus on why. Maybe you live alone and you want a few things in case you are ill - or maybe you are looking to reduce your demand-driven spending, in which case, a few things, bought when on offer, that you already use, will reduce your spending later on.

Third and most importantly, if you have any sort of tendency to hoard, overbuy or spend "because it is there" you must apply discipline to yourself to stop things getting out of hand. I do have a tendency to just buy things but I have over three years, got my toiletry-buying down to a fine art. Food shopping still needs work - I have 8 tins of beans instead of 4 in my cupboard because I forgot and was not using a list, and I have a pack of 12 monster kitchen rolls in my spare bedroom because I went with a friend to Costco and although a bargain, I overlooked the issue of limited storage in my house.

I hope this helps you work out what is best for you
SL

GreyQueen

BEAT_THE_DEBT wrote: »

Wow! Thanks all for your really helpful advice. Would you keep frozen? like chicken and mince?

I have a small freezer, what's called a tabletop model. If you have a freezer, you have some versatility. Think of having a few pkts of frozen veg, which is often fresher than fesh veg, and is prepped for use. This saves time and may result in you eating a proper meal instead of snacking or ordering takeaway. Or a bag of oven chips might stop a run to the chippy and be much cheaper.

If you're going to store stuff with a high price-to-volume, like meat and fish, be sure that you're home contents policy covers the amount you're likely to have inside, as all freezers die eventually. Also, are there a lot of powercuts where you live? And do you know how long your unopened freezer can maintain a safe operating temp with the power off (the instructions should tell you)?

Had a talk recently from an insurance wallah. One thing which does ring a fraud bell with insurance companies is if you claim the contents of your smallish freezer was £200+ of meat, whereas it was probably a mixture of other things of considerably less value.

I regard a freezer as a useful tool, and a way of maximising value for money, such as the happy day when I got 20 pkts of Anchooor butter at 8p each because that day was their BB day. Butter freezes very nicely, and that lot kept me going for more than a year.

BEAT_THE_DEBT

Thanks for all the replies. I think I will just store and extra chicken and mince, and then just stick to tinned and dried goods

pm2326

I like having a store cupboard as it means I don't gave to go to a supermarket every week and do a 'proper shop'. I can also decide to try a new recipe and don't need to go to the shops beforehand :T

I worked out that my kitchen cupboards were deep enough to store 3 tins of whatever I needed so now that's the maximum of each item I keep. So I have 3 tins tomatoes, 3 tins kidney beans, 3 tins baked beans etc, when I'm going shopping I just check how many tins I need of each to make it back to 3

I also have 3 months supply of cat food (wet & dry) and toilet rolls in the cupboard under the stairs along with 8 boxes of pg tips, I buy teabags only when less than £3 a box so tend to get 4 boxes at a time.

I just noticed a pattern...this all revolves around the number 3 ....Do I need help??? :rotfl: