When most people begin their food storage adventures they are feeling some panic and most suddenly have a different view about the price of groceries 🙂
My personal experience is that having a decent supply of regular canned and boxed foods from the grocery store is a really good idea and one that is the easiest to implement right at the start. Food packed in mylar bags and freeze-dried or dehydrated can come into play later. All you need is some place to store it and a way to keep track of what you have which is addressed in depth elsewhere.
But before all of that - money is for most of us a finite amount and needs to be used as wisely as possible.
The best way to get what you need for the best price is to know what the best sales prices are. This is where the price book comes in. It is simply a way of tracking the lowest price on a specific item and also keeping track of when it went on sale. All stores have seasonal sales - pumpkin is more often for sale in the fall than in the spring for example. But they also have rotating sales. Cheese goes on sale every 6 weeks or so in my area. The regular price could be anyway from $7-9 dollars for a 500gr. brick of Black Diamond cheddar however it regularly goes on sale for $4.44 a 500gr. brick. I buy enough for my family to last till the next sale and I always eat "on sale" cheese. Simple. A price book tells me what is a good price, what is a great price and approx. how long I will have to wait till the next sale. (I am not suggesting cheese is a great prep item but just using it as an example because I know those prices by heart!)
The same idea works for canned or boxed food that you eat on a regular basis.
Getting started requires a little extra money but after that you can use the savings to continue your plan. Some weeks the content of my grocery cart looks very strange. 2 cases of pasta sauce, 1 case of diced tomatoes, 10 toothbrushes and a watermelon. I try to buy only what is on sale plus what I have to have for the coming week. The more food storage you have the stranger the cart contents 😆
I could say more because I think the system is so worthwhile but this article I found online does a great job of explaining the particulars of how-to make a price book: http://couponing.about.com/cs/aboutcouponing/a/pricebooks.htm
My last piece of advice is to keep it simple. Even tracking 10 items that you use most regularly will save you a significant amount of money that can be used to buy more preps!
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*´¨`•.¸¸Anita <>< *.•´¸¸¨`*
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Quack, Cluck, Moo, Hee-Haw, Meow and Baaaaaaa from Shalom Engedi Farm
http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com/
That is a great idea. We shop at Nation grocery one or two times a mouth, we go to the one in Smithsfalls and buy enough to fill a cooler or two if we have money to spare. We started buying only dry goods so not to worry if it gets frozen. At some point we want to buy a metal shipping container. You can buy a 40 foot container delivered for $2000, or two 20 footers for the same price. So the plan is to get the two , 20 foot container, have them covered over with soil the back and sides , with air pipes put in around the container for venting air.
I was thinking about how we store all this food. So our plan is to store many meals in one cooler, so the contents of one cooler would feed us, so we don't have to dig through a bunch of containers to make a full meals. So far this is what I,m putting in the coolers. A bag of sugar, ground coffee, dry mike powered. rolled oats, rice, dry fruit, dry soup mix, lentils, split peas, dry spices, salt pepper. I think what i would like to do, is bring a cooler in and have the family eat out of it to see what is needed and whats not, to work it all out. Its not so much full meals i want in a cooler, because i hoping to supplement the cooler food with fresh meat or veg from the garden.
I like the idea of having variety in eah container for the same reasons you do. Be sure to keep track of the expiry dates of each item so you won't have old items contaminating the newer.
So you are using camping coolers? That's interesting. I use buckets in much the same way but I guess it depends on how much food storage you are planning on as to what containers you will use. I find buckets for free or very inexpensively so that's what works for me.
(`'•.¸(`'•.¸ ¸.•'´) ¸.•'´)
*´¨`•.¸¸Anita <>< *.•´¸¸¨`*
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Quack, Cluck, Moo, Hee-Haw, Meow and Baaaaaaa from Shalom Engedi Farm
http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com/
I only use cooler because i have a bunch of them, I also have buckets. My thing is keeping the dam mice out. I use to have old amo box, big enough to hold 50 lbs of stuff. I can't find them any more. But it was great , metal so not even a badger could get in. I have old freezers I use also to store food in. I'm keeping an eye on that, for any moisture build up. And you can pick them up for nothing at the local dump.
The price book sounds like a great idea. Basically, for me, that would consist of putting all that info in my wife's head onto paper...hehehe. Using the coolers for mixed foods sounds like a great idea for bugging out. No need to dig through many containers...if a cooler contains a day's worth of meals, just grab 3 or 4 of them and you're set.
Also, not sure about the rest of the country, but here in Quebec, the label on grocery store shelves has a unit price on it. For example, a 200ml jar of baby food will have the price/ml on the tag. This is useful for finding out if buying a bigger size is really a deal. Also, you can see the difference between different brands that may be packaged in a different size.
Also, not sure about the rest of the country, but here in Quebec, the label on grocery store shelves has a unit price on it. For example, a 200ml jar of baby food will have the price/ml on the tag. This is useful for finding out if buying a bigger size is really a deal. Also, you can see the difference between different brands that may be packaged in a different size.
In Ontario it is generally the same however when the item is on sale that information is not posted - just when I need it 🙂 I'm not very good with math in my head and when you add in a different size and a sale price and the choice of more than one brand - ack!
(`'•.¸(`'•.¸ ¸.•'´) ¸.•'´)
*´¨`•.¸¸Anita <>< *.•´¸¸¨`*
(¸.•'´(¸.•'´ `'•.¸)`' •.¸)
¸.•´
( `•.¸
`•.¸ )
¸.•)´
(.•´
Quack, Cluck, Moo, Hee-Haw, Meow and Baaaaaaa from Shalom Engedi Farm
http://adventures-in-country-living.blogspot.com/
Well, I started my price book, it will help a lot when I goto Costco. Was there yesterday, and bought canned goods, so I'll have a good base to build off of.
Love this price book idea and plan to do it! Great idea for tracking prices per weight etc. vancouverislemom is a huge help for me in this area too as she has already found where some of the hottest bargains are. My biggest blessing is having a Great Canadian Wholesale Club nearby... sure helps with bulk dried goods like pasta and rice! My biggest issue right now is trying to round up some good containers... love the cooler idea!
Containers are difficult to find. If you've got the money, I do enjoy Tupperware for their tight seals. They are expensive, which is why we buy them only once in a while. We really enjoy the 37 cup bin, but that's $40.
We were lucky, we bought our current home from a family member, who back in the day bought all kinds of the stuff, and she gave it to us when she left. So we started off right.
Containers are a challenge but I am getting creative, using coffee cans, large 3 litre juice jugs for the moment ... slow but sure!