![]() If they needed to quickly purchase a week, months or half years supply of food they would have the information needed. This information could then be leveraged against other factors like space in their home for storage, anticipated trouble on the horizon or anything else. Their purchases can then be adjusted accordingly, and calculating the calories yielded by the food supply on hand can easily show them how long they can expect to survive on full rations, half rations and so forth adjusting for the anticipated caloric consumption of two adults. Chart Your Usage Rates against Your Stock on HandĬonstantly stalking and stashing food is one thing, and if you did nothing else but accumulate more and more over time that would be okay, but you can be far more efficient, save more time, and waste less by charting your food or calorie consumption against the stocks you have on hand, and then calculating what the yield your food supply is in days or calories.įor instance, a single person or a couple living alone will need far less calories than a large family or mutual assistance group. The flimsy label on canned fruits, vegetables, soups, and the like are notorious for weakening and falling off over time, so I would recommend marking them directly on the medal of the can and also making a note of the contents so you won’t wind up playing “mystery meal!” 3. ![]() Some folks go a step further and a fix a colored dot or some other coded indicator to the item so they can see at a glance in what quarter the food was purchased or when the anticipated rotation date is.Įveryone has an opinion on these value added indicators, and they might not be necessary for you at all but if they are, by all means do it.Īnother thing, make sure you make your mark using some indelible pen or sticker and try to locate it on the package so that it cannot come off or be destroyed. I recommend you market with the month and the year purchased, at the minimum, but some people prefer a month, day, year format for maximum accuracy and accountability. The format is less important than just doing it. We just learned that you can’t trust the printed date on the package as any kind of expiration date, so to better inform our decisions and keep better track of our goods we need to mark them ourselves. This is so you know, at a glance, exactly when you purchased or preserved the food. You need to make it a habit to mark and the date every, single, last container of food that you buy and put into storage, whether or not you put it into its container or kept it in its original packaging. ![]() That is an entire article by itself, but you’ll be happy to know we have covered it before. You can get more mileage out of your food and have to interact with it less by taking the time to learn but the actual, typical shelf lives are of all the things you buy. If you go by these freshness dates as an indicator for when you should rotate your stockpile you’ll be throwing money away hand over fist and also be playing a shell game with an awful lot of moving cups. It might surprise you to learn that many things are entirely edible and will even taste perfect far, far after these printed label or package dates. ![]() This date is actually, much of the time, the sell-by or “freshness” date, a completely arbitrary standard set by the manufacturer or sometimes the seller of the food that is a guideline for how long the food can keep and taste best. Trust me, most things that you buy that are already in a good state of preservation will not be anywhere close to spoiling by this date so long as you store them properly, and keep them unaffected by pests. This date, usually called the expiration date, is often anything but. Forget About Using the “Sell By” Dates on the PackageĮvery single item of food you buy in the United States, at least one that comes from a grocery store, will be marked with a date. For a multi-month or even years-long supply of food, this can really be a job unto itself!Įvery minute or hour that you spend rotating your stockpile of food, however important this task is, is time you cannot spend doing something else, so in an effort to maximize your efficiency when rotating your own stockpile we are bringing you eight handy tips to help the task go quicker. A small food stockpile: canned food, canned Ragu, ramen noodles, bottled water, packs of salt, and more.Ĭanned, dried, dehydrated or otherwise, there is hardly anything a prepper adores more than a packed pantry or a well-stocked storeroom full to bursting with heavy shelves full of food.īut what new preppers might not know is how much work goes into maintaining, securing and properly rotating this stockpile of food. ![]()
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