Monday, July 19, 2010

Adventures in Food Storage- Our Rules

We have decided that we will not purchase any food, personal hygiene products, or cleaning supplies until after August 15th. The reason we are doing this for a whole month is because we do have items in our fridge and freezer that we will be allowed to use up. There is no way I want to throw out unused perishable items. We just can't afford that so I figured after a week or two those things should be pretty well depleted so we will be strictly onto canned and dried goods from then on. Also, there are a couple of previous commitments we will have to honor. I will be having dinner at girl's camp one night this week and Steve will be allowed to eat at work when they have their "lunch meetings" or when he has to take a customer out to lunch. Since both of these activities are part of his job and his company pays for it, he can do it. I also have to shop for an extended-family campout (I'm in charge of the meals) and an activity that involves an eating contest for Nate. These were also previous commitments so I feel I need to honor them.

I know this won't be "exactly" like it would if we were eating our food storage during an emergency. We will be using our refrigerator, stove, and microwave which we wouldn't have if it was the "real thing" but hopefully it will be a good gauge on what we need to do better on. On one of the blogs I read they call this eating from the pantry. You can eat anything and use any modern convenience- you just can't eat out or shop.

2 comments:

Diana said...

Not all emergencies are "take out the power and be destitute" type of emergencies. What about a loss of job or a severe deduction in pay? At that point, I believe you should eat off food storage as well and you could save money to pay electricity and gas that you don't have to spend on food because you are eating from what you already have. So really, you are going through an "emergency" of sorts even still using your appliances. I believe no job is an emergency that needs attention.

Good work. I'm sure you will enjoy this experience and the trip to the grocery store on August 16th. :)

Jennie said...

Diana, I totally agree! We had this happen a few years ago. Steve was unemployed for about 4 months. We still purchased perishables, but we ate our food storage to make it through. The economy still isn't that great so I think there are still a lot of people facing these types of "calamities".