Food Storage, Just Plain and Simple

Over the years of blog writing, I've run into extreme preppers who say I should do way more than I'm doing. Well, they give me anxiety! I need my efforts to be just plain and simple. Years ago, when I first started gathering food storage, I was completely overwhelmed. I kept thinking my shelves had to look like the shelves of a woman who cans her food from her Garden of Eden vegetable garden. But honestly, I buy most of my food.

When The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints simplified their food storage (home storage) program in 2007, a light bulb went on for me. IT was plain and simple!

• Food Supply (three-month and long-term)
• Drinking Water
• Financial Reserve

I was already a frugal grocery shopper, so I got that three-month food supply thing figured out super quick by learning not to leave my cupboards bare. You don't have to be a hoarder, but purchase a few more cans, boxes or bags of food than you normally need each week. And soon you'll have a food supply. It a c t u a l l y  g r o w s!

Gathering emergency water was simple. It just took one Saturday to get focused, find containers and have my husband fill them up.

As far as a financial reserve (aka emergency savings), I came up with a monthly amount of money our bank automatically transfers from checking to savings. Slow and steady wins the race. Every so often, I get some cash out in small bills, and bring it home for emergencies. 

Gathering long-term foods can be simple if you learn to use what you store. I know, I know. Everyone wants to buy freeze-dried food they don't actually eat until there's a disaster. But the counsel is to gather food storage gradually and USE IT, so it gets rotated. Then when you lose your job or are financially strapped when a family member has a long-term illness, you can use that food. It's not just for natural disasters.

Elder Dallin H. Oaks, an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, gave us this counsel:

“We need to make both temporal and spiritual preparation for the events prophesied at the time of the Second Coming. And the preparation most likely to be neglected is the one less visible and more difficult—the spiritual. A 72-hour kit of temporal supplies may prove valuable for earthly challenges, but, as the foolish virgins learned to their sorrow, a 24-hour kit of spiritual preparation is of greater and more enduring value.” Preparation For the Second Coming, May 2004

Ensign Magazine, March 2009

I want to be one of those five wise virgins in the 25th chapter of Matthew and gather temporal food and spiritual oil. I hope each of you wants to move forward with preparedness too. It can be just plain and simple.

Valerie Albrechtsen
The Food Storage Organizer