The Prepper Life:

Building Your Prepper Pantry

Copyright 2014 by Penelope Hoyt

If you enjoy this book, make sure to check out these other books by Penelope Hoyt:

City Preppers: How to Build Your Pantry and Develop the Skills You Need to Survive, Even When You Live in an Apartment (Prepper Guides Book 1)

City Preppers: How to Create a Bug Out Bag That Works (Prepper Guides Book 2) 

City Preppers: What to Do During a Power Outage When Your Kids Are Bored (Prepper Guides Book 3) 

Penelope Hoyt is an urban survivalist, homeschool mom, and author of:

The Nerdy Survivalist: How to Protect and Care For Your Family in the Direst of Circumstances 

Readers may contact her through her website:

The Nerdy Survivalist

If you’re thinking of starting your own pantry, there are a few things you should consider before you head to the store. This guide is designed to get you thinking about how you’ll start your pantry, what things you want to stock up on, and how much you can afford to invest in a pantry.

Whether you’re a full-time college student who wants to start storing food in your studio apartment or you’re the busy mother of three who wants to make your budget stretch a bit, you’ll find tips and tricks for making a pantry work for you.

CONTENTS:

Why have a pantry?

Where should your pantry be?

How much should you spend on prepping?

What types of things should your pantry contain?

Where should you buy your pantry items?

About the Author

Why have a pantry?

After a long day at work, you pick up the kids and head home to start dinner.

You grab a meal from the freezer or order pizza because you’re so tired, but what if you didn’t have to?

What if you didn’t have to rush to find the perfect meal?

What if you could walk into your pantry, grab a bunch of supplies, and create an amazing supper without stress or hassle?

If you’re tired of stressing out about having the right ingredients on hand, if you’re overwhelmed with constant trips to the store, and if you’re finished feeling like you never have anything available when you need it, it might be time to start your own pantry.

The perfect pantry should be a place you can go to grab your must-haves for cooking.

In the world of prepping, it should also be a place where you can find things that you wouldn’t normally be able to acquire during a natural disaster, storm, or viral outbreak in your community.

Preppers around the world swear by pantries for a number of reasons:

1)       Starting a pantry ensures that your family is going to eat even if you can’t go to the grocery store.

2)     Starting a pantry ensures that you’re going to be taken care of if you experience a financial crisis that makes being able to buy food an impossibility.

3)      Starting a pantry means that you’ll reduce your stress and frustration when it’s time to try a new recipe since you’ll already have things on hand that you need.

4)     Starting a pantry means you’ll be able to share food with friends and neighbors if you’re experiencing a community crisis and they need food.

No matter what your personal goals are when it comes to preparing for disasters or becoming a more efficient homemaker, creating a pantry you can work with is a “must.”

As a child, I grew up with parents who were well aware of the importance of stocking up. We gardened during the summer and canned everything we could so that when winter rolled around, getting snowed in for a week wouldn’t be such a big deal.

When we were stretched thin financially, we didn’t have to stress out about rising grocery store prices. We could simply head downstairs to our pantry and choose what we were going to make for supper. Often this would be spaghetti or other nonperishable food items, but it meant we could have a hot meal, so no one minded.

Your pantry could simply be a way to stretch your paychecks, or it could be a way to help your family survive during a global crisis.

Your pantry can be whatever you want it to be.

But you have to start it in order to benefit from it.

Where should your pantry be?

Your first step in starting a pantry is to decide where your pantry will be.

Some preppers like the idea of converting an unused room in the house to a pantry. This works especially well if you have an extra room in your basement, such as an office. That way, you’ll know that your food is being stored in a cool, dry place.

Other preppers are limited by space and will need to utilize what they have.

I’ve lived in a home with a large pantry, but I’ve also used under-the-bed storage for canned goods, a hallway linen closet for food storage, and even my cupboard beneath the bathroom sink for storing gallons of water. Where you live doesn’t matter. What matters is making the most of the space that you have.

Remember: Your food doesn’t have to be stored in the kitchen.

When you’re picking a location for food storage, make sure that you avoid the garage unless you live in a cold area. While the garage might seem like a solid place to start stocking up on food, remember that temperatures fluctuate dramatically in garages, so your food could go bad before you have a chance to use it.

If you’re limited on space, you could consider:

Cleaning out a kitchen cupboard and having a mini-pantry.

Using a hallway closet.

Keeping food under your child’s bed.

Getting stackable boxes for storing emergency food items in a basement.

Cleaning out a drawer in your dresser for storing water.

Keeping items on a closet shelf.

There is no wrong way to start your pantry. You don’t need a lot of money or a lot of space to get started. You just need to be willing to try.

How much should you spend on prepping?

When you first start prepping, it can be easy to get overexcited. That’s awesome! It’s important that when you decide to prep, you’re actually interested in it. It’s important that you get excited because you’re doing something important. You’re taking your family’s safety and well-being into your own hands. That’s something to be proud of.

What you should be careful about, however, is becoming so excited that you go into debt in order to prep. You can absolutely start prepping on a budget. Even if you’re limited financially, you can certainly start prepping. What you don’t need to do is spend a grand on dehydrated food that you might not even eat.

Consider setting a prepper budget for yourself. This could be $20 a paycheck or it could be $100 per month. The amount that you spend isn’t important. What matters is that you find ways to get the most value for your money and that you don’t accumulate debt in order to start building your pantry.

Here are a few ways that you can start prepping slowly in order to spend the least amount of money on your pantry purchases:

Buy an extra can of food each time you buy your weekly groceries.

Save your condiment packages from fast food restaurants.

Visit retailer websites and order samples. Use your sample products to begin your prepper pantry. You can get samples for medicines, tampons, snacks, and even beverages. You can check out a sample website, freebie website, or email brands directly to ask for a sample.

Visit your dollar store for dehydrated food and crackers.

Clip coupons each week. You don’t have to go crazy, but try to use one coupon per shopping trip. You can get coupons online at coupons.com, on brand Facebook pages, on brand websites, through eBay.com, or in your local newspaper on Sundays. You can also pick up a copy of All You magazine, which contains coupons.

Buy things when they’re on sale. You can read store fliers to find the best sales or frequent a couponing website for information on upcoming deals. Some of my favorites are Hip2Save and The Krazy Coupon Lady.

If you shop online, utilize a promo code. Do a search for “NameOfStore promo code” and you’ll find some specials and deals. RetailMeNot.com is also a good place to start searching for coupon codes you can use online.

Take loose change to your local CoinStar machine. You can exchange it for an Amazon gift card and use that money toward your prepping.

Find a way to reduce your personal expenses and use the extra money for prepping. For example, consider going with a lower phone plan, a less expensive cable plan, or even cutting out buying snacks at work.

Store ingredients, rather than products. For example, instead of storing boxes and boxes of toothpaste, store coconut oil and baking soda so that you can make your own. An extra plus is that you can use the same ingredients for different products, which makes this a less costly alternative to buying things prepackaged.

What types of things should your pantry contain?

Obviously, your pantry should contain items that you’re going to use on a regular basis. The more often you use something, the easier it’s going to be to rotate your pantry stock and avoid having your pantry items expire or become damaged while they’re being stored. Although you should cater your pantry items to your own personal needs, you should also consider storing some of these prepper items that you can use regularly.

Remember to focus on things that have a long shelf life, foods that are healthy, and supplies that you can use again and again.

Nuts

Pasta and sauce

Dried fruit

Dried vegetables

Honey

Boxed or dried milk

Crackers

Peanut butter

Tea

Coffee

Sugar

Soup

Canned meat

Dried meat

Juice

Flour

Yeast

Baking soda

White vinegar

Essential oils

Spices

Salt

Granola bars

Protein bars

Water

Water purification tablets

Disposable plates and cups

Hygiene supplies

Canning supplies if you plan to garden

Remember, before you store something, ask yourself:

Will I use this?

How often will I use this?

Do I need to store this?

Will my family eat this?

Is this healthy?

How many ways can I use this item?

The more variety you can get from a single item, the more valuable it is to store that item. Especially if you’re limited on space, make sure that you’re storing items you can use again and again. Some things, like baking soda and vinegar, are especially beneficial to include in your pantry since you can use them for cleaning, toothpaste, healthcare, or in your cooking.

It’s also important that you always label the things that you buy and place in your pantry. Write down the date that you purchased the item, so you know how long it’s been in your pantry. If there are items you have stored that you don’t necessarily use all the time, this will ensure that you’re able to tell exactly how old something is.

In addition to storing food and household supplies, your pantry also needs a number of other things in order to help you stay organized. The more organized that you are with your prepping, the less likely you are to waste food and supplies. Additionally, getting organized also means that you’ll be able to start a pantry even if you live in a small space, such as an apartment or dorm room.

Consider purchasing:

Shelves for organizing your foods and supplies.

Baskets to store bags of food, such as bagged beans.

A shoe organizer to put over your pantry door. You can use this for storing plastic utensils, napkins, first aid supplies, or condiment packages.

Clear plastic containers for storing pasta or beans.

Milk crates to organize heavy items on the floor of your pantry, such as large bags of rice.

There’s no right or wrong way to begin your pantry. You just need to make sure that you’re planning items that your family is going to use regularly. For example, my kids love dried fruit, so we store a ton of it. They’ll eat it for days. We also use it on a regular basis when we go to the park, go on road trips, or just need something quick and easy to eat.

In my area, power outages are a concern, so I try to focus a lot on easy-to-store items that we can eat without cooking. When you decide what items you’ll store, make sure that you consider your personal storage situation. Do you want a pantry you can count on when you don’t get paid regularly? Do you want something that you can utilize when the power is out? Do you simply want something that you can use for quick and easy dinners without having to plan anything fancy?

Set your goals, get organized, and start stocking up.

Your pantry will be complete before you know it!

Where should you buy your pantry items?

When it comes to pantry shopping, you can basically start anywhere. Whether you want to begin by buying baskets and plastic containers or you want to jump right into food storage, there are a variety of places you can start your shopping.

Wal-Mart

Wal-mart is an inexpensive place to start prepping, especially if you want to get plastic containers. You can also head to the sporting goods section of Wal-Mart to find dried food options that will store for years on your pantry shelves.

Target

Take advantage of Target’s dollar section (near the entrance of the store) to find cheap storage containers, markers, and labeling products for your pantry items. Target is also a great place to stock up on canned goods since the store offers frequent coupons and sales.

Dollar Tree

A lot of preppers forget about how cheap their local dollar store really is. Head to your Dollar Tree to get seeds, potting soil, containers, crackers, and canned goods for only a buck. You can also get bottled water at your Dollar Tree, though you can often find the same price on water at Wal-Mart or Target.

Emergency Essentials

One of my favorite stores is the online prepper-mart called Emergency Essentials. This store offers a huge variety of canned goods, freeze-dried foods, and dehydrated foods. Most of their foods can easily be stored for 25 years (not that you’d want to store your food that long, but you can) or can be easily incorporated into your regular meals. Not sure what to try first? Try their potato soup or gourmet hot chocolate.

Cheaper Than Dirt

If you want to start storing freeze-dried foods or water, check out Cheaper Than Dirt. While this store primarily offers guns and ammo, they also have a sizeable prepper section where you can buy canteens and other pantry items.

Amazon Pantry

If you have Amazon Prime, consider purchasing canned and dried goods through Amazon Pantry. This is a great way to start stocking up on dried food and nonperishables without having to go to the store. I especially love using this shopping service since it means I don’t have to shop with youngsters in tow.

Garage sales

Yes, I know this isn’t a store, but don’t forget the power of garage sales for getting shelves and baskets for your pantry at a low price. If you can find moving sales, you’ll be especially lucky since many people like to ditch their shelves before they move into a new home.

Costco or Sam’s Club

If you have friends who are also interested in building up their pantries and storing food, you could also consider shopping at Costco or Sam’s Club together. Since these stores let you buy in bulk, you can simply buy things together and then split them with your buddies. Consider buying things like beef jerky or canned goods at these stores.

About the Author

Penelope Hoyt is the author of The Nerdy Survivalist and over 20 other books on prepping. Her work centers on helping moms and dads prepare their families for viral outbreaks, economic problems, and natural disasters. Hoyt lives in the Midwest with her family.