I'm probably a bit late in getting around to it, but I've decided it's a good time to start stock-piling some basic food items.
What with the conflict in Ukraine pushing up fuel prices, and given the fact that Russia is the third largest wheat producer in the world, I can see food prices going up pretty soon too.
And who knows, we may see real shortages with a whole region of the world and tens of millions of people close to Europe now effectively taken out of economic production thanks to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
I haven't done a big shop yet, since making this decision so I am off to s slow start, just buying a few extra things on the two occasions I've been shopping this week...
I think I'm going to go for a TWOFOLD strategy and this is only phase one, which is to just buy MORE of the dried staples that I'd ordinarily buy in one-two months and store them in a plastic tub in a cool area, then repeat with a second plastic tub, then a third, so I've got six months of basic staples stored.
Then when I start to run low on whatever products I've got simply empty the first tub I've got into the Kitchen and replenish it - by which time I'll have more of an idea of what I've bought too much of and what too little of....
This should also help me with the cost of living increase I'm expecting: buying certain basic goods earlier than usual.
I'm going to limit myself to the following:
- Grains - Rice/ Pasta/ Flour/ couscous, basically all I use!
- pulses - tins of beans and chickpeas
- cereals - namely muesli
- nuts and seeds
- dried fruit
- a few spices such as Cinnamon that I use a lot
- coffee and tea.
- sugar
- tomato sauces
- maybe salt/ mustard/ vinegar/ other spicing agents.
I mean, they're not all ESSENTIALLY ESSENTIAL, but this is the easy lite-survivalist version, and If I think of anything else I'll add it in!
PHASE 2 is going to be a bit more hardcore, this will involve buying larger sacks of rice and beans and maybe tins in bulk and distributing them into my tub system, which might require buying more storage: storage within storage!
I'll aim for a 6 month rolling stock in the first instance and depending how I get on maybe up that to 12 months, and more than that I think runs the risk of food spoiling, at least with my level of storage-discipline anyway!