Items To Stockpile
Everyone has their own personal preferences on what they like to eat, so you should take that into consideration as you start building your stockpile. Begin with staples that you’ll use every day. Luxury items should be the last thing you put into your stockpile. Below I list general items to have in your finished stockpile if you want a roughly six-month supply for two people. You can adjust accordingly based on the size of your family.
Canned vegetables
- 20 cans or so of each type of vegetable you and your family eat regularly.
- I keep five cans each of peas, butter beans, kidney beans and carrots for myself since my son doesn’t care for these. He prefers French-cut green beans and will eat corn, so I keep about 30 cans (combined) of those.
- I also use fresh and frozen vegetables, mainly broccoli, to make up the vegetable portion of our meals.
- A six-month supply for us is 30 cans since we don’t eat a lot of fruits in my house. I tend to put these through my juicer for smoothies.
- I try to keep 20 to 24 cans of tuna in water, 10 large cans of chicken, three to five cans of bean-less chili for chili dogs and five cans each of Spam and Treat.
- For 6 months, I would keep a total of 30-40 cans of the soups your family likes.
- This can include cans of cream of chicken, cream of mushroom, cream of celery and broths for making meals. Also, keep taco seasoning and various mixed spice packets on hand for adding to whatever fresh meat you may use. A six-month supply for me would be 3-4 cans of each of the soups, 10 or so of the taco seasoning pouches and 10 or so of the broth. They’re always useful since there’s so much you can do with them.
- This will depend on if you are a baker at all. I am not that much of a baker so I keep about 10 pounds on hand. If you make your own bread and pastries, you may want to keep closer to 50 pounds on hand for six months.
- This, too, will depend on if you are a baker and if you add sugar to your coffee and tea. For us, this is roughly 8 pounds of white sugar and 1 pound of brown (for oatmeal).
- We eat more rice than pasta so I have two, 1-pound boxes of instant rice and about 5 pounds of regular rice.
- I try to keep 10-20 boxes of these on hand, since they are relatively quick and easy meals. When stored properly they will last the entire six months without going stale.
- This includes Au Gratin potatoes, scalloped potatoes, instant potatoes, instant stuffing, etc. Again, about 10-20 boxes because they make great additions to meals or can be meals on their own if needed. Most of these are single meal items, although the instant potatoes 1-pound box can be stretched to four meals.
- I tend to keep three to four boxes of each of our preferred cereals. Be careful about how many boxes you keep on hand since they can go stale faster than you expect depending on the humidity.
- I keep one of the largest boxes of dry milk on hand for use in cooking and I make homemade cocoa in the winter with it. I have 10 cans of evaporated milk on hand for those few times when I’m short on regular milk and use it for making things like macaroni and cheese.