“Gardening is setting your family up for the future. You will learn about growing food, learn about preserving food and learn about real food. It’s one of the best things you can do for your family and your children. Learn to garden and teach them.”

— Sasha Savoy

I don’t know about you, but my family loves to eat! We love having a well stocked pantry for spur of the moment dinner ideas, snacks on hand and more. But sometimes you have to think even bigger and realize that a “Prepped Pantry” or “Prepper Pantry” is a must have in today’s times.

I want to start by saying that this post is in no way meant to be a fear mongering post. There are SO many reasons to have a prepped pantry for your family and today I will share why we do this and what all we have in here.

Prepping Your Pantry — Our 100 year old cottage style home doesn’t actually have a real pantry. I had to get creative to create one in our laundry room as well as utilize the built in shelves in my kitchen and spare cabinets that I had available.

WHY TO HAVE A PREPPED PANTRY

I should start off by saying that I started prepping my pantry in February 2020 right before my fourth baby was due. I was doing this because I loved shopping at a store further away and we loved their snacks for the kids, so with a new baby I wanted to make sure we were well stocked. Well, as we all know, in March of 2020 the world shut down and I was very grateful for our little snack stash of our favorites.

Things go further from there on why having a prepped pantry is beneficial. For starters, natural disasters can easily wipe out power to stores, homes and more. Many of us were without power for 1-2 weeks this summer due to a severe hurricane and again, we were pretty prepped on our food. Imagine having power to cook at home but stores not having power to open and sell food? This is where a prepped pantry is super handy! I also experienced a similar issue after terrible snow storms impacted Texas and left many of our store shelves empty as trucks couldn’t get to our stores to deliver food. Natural disaster can really put a halt on the supply chain or just local stores in general. A stocked pantry is a must for this.

And as we have seen since 2020, supply chains keep having issues and many store shelves go bare every now and then. People wipe out store shelves before hurricanes or snow storms and other times, shelves are empty for unknown reasons. Our supply chains do not seem to be highly predictable or stable at many times, so again having things prepped is beneficial.

And finally, another reason to prep now is due to the rising food prices. This may seem counter intuitive to spend more money on groceries with higher prices, but if prices keep increasing we may need to utilize our prepped pantries more to eat our favorites and such. We all have different financial situations and some months are harder than others for some people. With a prepped pantry you can shop less during the harder months and rely on the prepped pantry to get you through; and then slowly replenish the pantry as you can. This is something we do a bit of here and there. When I notice our spending is high on other areas, I can try to meal plan around our stock and spend less at the grocery store.

Creating a prepper pantry — This is just the beginning of our tomato canning. We are hoping to be able to double this before the plants are over. We also preserve other items from our gardens such as squash, carrots and peppers by blanching and then freezing.

EVER CONSIDERED GARDENING?

We first wanted chickens back in 2020 and the next thing you know, we were designing our garden. What was supposed to be just a little garden for fun has turned into a bountiful supply of food for our family and even our friends. We have had the ability to can and preserve food and grow natural food where we know exactly what goes on it. Our first garden allowed us to preserve enough potatoes for nearly six months, canned tomatoes for about seven months and frozen vegetables for several months. Now on our second spring garden and we are doubling and even tripling those numbers possibly. We have been very blessed by our garden and I would say this is the number one way to start create a prepped pantry for your family. But if gardening isn’t in your plans for right now, then keep reading!

Stocking up on food — If there were ever a time to learn to garden, it’s now!

Preserving Food — To preserve our squash, carrots and broccoli we just blanch them real quick after chopping and then freeze. Peppers are just rinsed, chopped and frozen. Potatoes are stored in a hamper.

WHAT TO STOCK IN A PREPPED PANTRY

Dry goods. We focus a lot on canned vegetables, dry beans, pasta sauces and pastas.
Broths. This is easy for quick soups during times of need.
Flours, sugars, dry active yeast and baking powder. Learn a good bread recipe to provide bread to your family when needed. Currently we store our bags of flour in our deep freeze, but I will eventually be investing in 5 gallon food grade buckets with gamma lids for this.
Oats, cereals and granolas. Having extra breakfast type items on hand and maybe some kids favorite snack bars can be helpful.
Peanut Butter. This is such an easy one!
Canned vegetables. This is a major bonus to gardening! But if you don’t garden, you can still purchase produce in bulk and can it! We currently can our tomatoes and preserve our squash, peppers, carrots and broccoli by blanching them and freezing them.
Detergents for clothes and dishes. We keep extra bottles on hand for times of need. No one wants to be dirty here ;)
Toilet paper. Because no one wants to relive 2020.
Medicines and essential oils. Stay stocked on pain and fever relievers, cough medicines, oils, herbal tinctures and even vitamins. We have a large stash of this as well.
You can also do diapers and wipes if you feel that is needed and after the formula shortage we have seen, it wouldn’t hurt to create a stock of this as well. Feminine products can be practical as well or invest in something such as the cup.
Meat. I’m very fortunate to be married to a hunter and our other freezer stays full with meat just for this. Sometimes I will also pick up extra bacon or lunch meat to freeze away and save for when we need.

In order to create a well stocked pantry, we add on a few items each week that we may not actually need for our weekly meals, but that we would need in the long run.

HOW TO STORE

I was never one to buy in bulk because I have never had a real pantry. In our previous home our pantry was a large wooden cabinet that my dad built us and in this home, we originally just used some of our kitchen cabinets. Once I began prepping, I made extra cabinet space by consolidating things and giving away unused items. Now, I have created a pantry in our laundry room which is right off of the kitchen. It’s almost like it was meant to be this way all along!

There’s so many ways to begin your prepped pantry. You can store flours, sugars, beans, oats, etc… in 5 gallon food grade buckets or freeze away your flour to last longer. There’s many ways to do this and I find that as time goes on, I learn new things about it! Personally I love to store things in glass jars for safe keeping and because it looks pretty. We currently do not have food grade buckets for our flours, but freeze them instead. However I plan to invest soon in 5 gallon buckets for sugars and flours. Food grade buckets with gamma lids can easily be found on Amazon.

Storing Food Long Term — We currently freeze our flour but will soon be investing in 5 gallon food grade buckets with gamma lids. We use a lot of flour in our home, so keeping a stash of this is a must have for me.

Other Tips

The key to a prepped pantry is to make sure that you rotate your items so nothing goes bad. If you’re buying organic items, they will have a shorter shelf life compared to non organic. Organic canned goods are usually 1-2 years. I frequently look through our items and move the newer things to the back and use our older items. My “prepped” pantry is combined with my regular pantry. So in other words, I just have a REALLY well stocked pantry. My personal goal is to have enough food for roughly three months for our family of six. However, I think that six months of prepped food is ideal.

Stocked Pantry — The goal for us is to be able to have food for 3 months. It may not always be the best thing and it may require smaller portions, but I believe between our beans, preserved vegetables, our frozen meat from hunting and more, that we would be set for at least three months.

Creating a stock of food — This is a small selection of our canned goods. And as well rotate through them to use them (you never want your food to go bad), we replenish them. *Organic food does have a shorter shelf life, so be mindful of this.

What are your thoughts on storing food for your family? To be honest, I never wanted to be the person with a full pantry because I have seen other family members that purchased in bulk but let so many items go expired. However we are a large family that eats mostly home cooked meals, therefore our ability to store food has been a great thing for us.

I would love to hear your thoughts about this topic below!

XO, Sasha