Last week we talked about how much I love September! There are so many fun things about September rank among my favorites. One is the fact that September is National Preparedness Month. I love to talk/think/do things about preparedness. You can listen to lectures and read articles and find dozens of ways to be prepared during National Preparedness Month. All month we are going to break National Preparedness Month up into smaller topics. Remember we tend to be able to process it better and make more progress with preparedness when we think about smaller topics. Last week we even made these small sections in the preparedness binder we made. One of our sections was on food storage. Today I want to talk about making a subsection in that section called useable food storage.

One of my favorite preparedness things is having well organized useable food storage or a home store. No matter what you call it, it is pretty much the same thing. You buy multiples of something you use when it is on sale. This is why everyone’s useable food storage is going to look a bit different. You are storing what your family uses all of the time. When items I use are at rock bottom prices I try to buy as much as my family will realistically use before the items go bad. Then when you need the items you shop from your home store or food storage. Buy new as needed and remember to rotate your useable food storage.

Well organized useable food storage is a great way to help ensure your family will have enough to eat if it becomes temporarily hard to purchase groceries. This could be because of finances or some sort of environmental emergency. It could also be from illness or simply being really busy. It’s great to have useable food storage on hand. Having well-organized, useable food storage is a great way to be prepared.

Why is having well organized useable food storage important? Why won’t a bunch of things tossed on a shelf work just as well? If you can’t find it, see it, use it – it can’t help you when you need it. This well organized useable food storage is pretty easy to maintain if you follow a few basic tips. If you don’t follow them, you will have food storage chaos. (Trust me, I know from experience.) There are a few basic tips I like to follow to help me keep on top of things.

Put items away
I try to put my items away shortly after I purchase them. Having everything where it belongs helps you see what you have and helps you keep track of your food storage. Sometimes life is crazy and I put the bags of groceries on the floor near the shelf. If I don’t get it put away soon after, more bags pile up. This leads to that dreaded chaos. You forget what you have and may buy unneeded items. Getting items put away quickly is an important part of having well organized food storage.

Store like items together
This step may be a little different for everyone, just do it how it works for you. I try to store things together that are related or seem to go together. I think if it like how a grocery store is organized. When you go to look for something in your food storage, it will be easier to find because it is on the shelf where it makes sense to you. This makes your organized food storage much easier to use.

Keep storage areas as close together as possible
I’ve lived in some places that had great food storage areas and some that had none. In many of those hard food storage places it took a lot of creativity to have well organized food storage. Even in the hardest of places, keeping the storage areas as close together as possible was a great help. Running all over the house to locate items can defeat the helpfulness and discourage the use of items. Again you may end up buying things you don’t need.

Set rules about use
Having a great, well organized useable food storage can lead kids (or adults) to feel like that can just grab a snack and use whatever they want. Be sure to set some basic rules with your family about who can take things from the food storage and when that can happen. It will help items last longer and keep people from using up that one favorite snack or other item too quickly.

Know what you have
Find some way to have a basic idea of the inventory in you well organized food storage. If it is organized and easy to find, this could be as simple as taking a visual look before you shop. Some people keep detailed lists and itemize everything. There are lots of ways to do it in between those two extremes. Find what works for you and make a habit of knowing what you have in your well organized food storage. This is the perfect time to use that useable food storage section in your binder. Keep a list of the most used useable food storage items in your binder. Keep track of inventory and keep lists of things you need to buy.