Food Storage

Saturday I took a LONG list to Walmart. My parents gave us money to get started on our 3-month food supply for Christmas, and it took me a while to figure out what we would need. I have no idea if this is even close to the right amount of food, but it's a start. 2 1/2 overflowing carts later, I came home with all this. The checkers at the store thought I was completely nuts, and I was questioning that myself as I put cases upon cases into my cart.



A huge concern about getting started on our food storage was the latter part: Storage. We love our apartment but that is definitely an area it is lacking. I didn't think there was ANYWHERE we could store anything else unless we made a mountain of canned goods, covered it with a tablecloth and called it our coffee table. Luckily, we didn't need to do that. I was able to clear everything we had out of our "pantry" closet (none of it was food). We'd be using it as a regular storage closet since it was the only one we have. I was able to get rid of some things, and creatively move the others. And... I got ALL (almost) of the food storage into the pantry! Of course, it's full to the brim and it'll be a pain to try to add anymore or actually try to get anything out, but we did it!

Since I mainly focused on getting everyday-type foods, now I feel more ready to move on to bulk food storage items like dried foods and grains.

Ethan was also a big help. As soon as the groceries were brought in and he saw all the cans, he searched through the kitchen drawers until he found both our can openers and proceeded to try to figure how the heck his mom opens the cans. I had no idea he'd ever noticed me using one.

My TIPS:
1. Set a goal, whether it is how much to spend initially or how much to get by a certain date.
2. Find good resources. My favorites were http://foodstoragemadeeasy.net/ (GREAT spreadsheets to help get a reliable count of what you need) and http://everydayfoodstorage.net/ (nice handouts, recipes, and tutorials).

My QUESTION:
1. How can I rotate my food and ensure that I am not just using up my food storage? I really hope my grocery bills don't start dropping because I'm using food storage and not replacing it, but I also don't really want to tally each tiny thing I take from the pantry each time I use something.