Friday, April 24, 2020 –
All right, this should have been discussed earlier, but a friend only recently asked me about this, so I’m writing a series of posts on…dun, dun, dun! THE DEEP PANTRY! (please read that last phrase in a deep, scary voice).
For the record, none of what I say should be taken as Gospel truth. Look to the Bible for Gospel truth!
This is only meant as a look into how my family handles this. You and your family may need a different type of plan, and that is okay. This is just some advice on what works for MY family. Do not jump all over me with complaints; you do you!
Likewise, this is NOT for serious long-term preppers. If you are an extreme prepper, look away! This is going to piss you off because I am totally NOT planning for an apocalypse. This is about floating my family for a couple of weeks so we do not have to worry when short-term disasters strike.
Okay, now that all that is out of the way…What is a deep pantry, and do you need one?
Short answer: a deep pantry is a rotating supply of food your family can fall back on during times of distress (ahem…now), and yes, you probably need one.
Long answer: a deep pantry is where you and your family plan out AT LEAST two weeks of food, including ALL meals and daily snacks. It is food that stores for a long time, but can be easily rotated into your regular meal schedule when needed. Your deep pantry should be stuff you ENJOY eating and do not mind keeping on hand for emergencies. Your deep pantry should also have a bumper stash of personal products your family will need (soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, paper towels, feminine products, cleaning products, etc.). These should be things your family actually USES!
To be clear, I am not talking about the full-bore extreme prepper life that involves hordes of freeze-dried foods and loads of ammo. Sure, an argument can be made for that, but not in this post. Rather, I am talking about a massive storm hit and your power is out for 72 hours, or oh no! you lost your job and need to cut spending for a couple weeks until your next job kicks in.
I am talking about the low-level, easy planning you and your family can do to stave off impending, immediate doom and make it through a couple weeks of tough times. A deep pantry is NOT about hoarding. It is about strategic planning to make sure you can worry about one less thing when a short-term disaster strikes. When you set up a deep pantry, you are pre-planning for random upheavals.
Nobody wants to ***plan*** for disaster, but disasters do happen. At the most basic level, everyone should have 72 hours of food, water, and personal items. Storms happen every year. Being prepared to handle 72 hours without power is not crazy. It is common sense.
Now, let’s think a bit more long term. Let’s pretend a pandemic hit and suddenly you find yourself at home for the foreseeable future. Grocery stores are open, but there are shortages of general supplies like TP and feminine products because people are using them ask make-shift masks. You can order take out, but you also just lost your job because, well, everything is closed, and you were suddenly deemed “non-essential.” The government has also said to space out your grocery visits and only go every couple of weeks. Can you make it?
Generally speaking, we keep a 2-week supply in our deep panty. At the start of this mess, Andrew asked me to expand our deep pantry to cover at least four weeks in case of food shortages or other necessary products. As many of us have seen, people are panic buying loads of strange things. Ahem…like toilet paper?!?!
Four weeks is just shy of a month, and we have been under our stay-at-home order for a little over a month. We are able to get fresh produce every couple of weeks for the time being, but having a deep pantry has allowed us to further space our grocery store visits while still keeping healthy, delicious meals on the table. Likewise, I can attest that we have definitely been using our deep pantry stash of personal items with gusto. Kleenex is the only thing we have run out of because of my severe spring allergies, but I have switched to my cloth handkerchiefs and am free to blow my nose at will!
But what about large families? Yes, a deep pantry can work for a large family too. It takes a little extra planning, and a lot more storage space, but it can be done. All the same tips apply, just on a larger scale. I have a couple of friends with huge (I mean HUGE) families. They have a deep pantry. Their meals are all ones they enjoy and would feed their army. In one case, they got creative and interspersed some of the prepper freeze-dried meats and vegetables for in-a-pinch tacos. Ehh…whatever works!
Saint Corona, pray for us!
