My Kids Ate My Food Storage: What I Learned

My kids ate my food storage.

Well, not all of it, but after several of my adult children moved back home, our household went from three people to seven almost overnight. What happened next gave me a real-life test of my food storage system that I never planned for.

In this episode, I'm sharing what foods disappeared first, what I had too much of, what surprised me, and what changes I'm making as a result. This unexpected pantry experiment taught me a lot about what our family actually uses.

We talk about:
• What ran out first in my layer two pantry
• The foods I had stocked well
• Where my food storage system needs improvement
• Common mistakes that happen when multiple people access food storage
• How food storage needs change during different seasons of life

If you've ever wondered whether your food storage would actually work for your family, this episode offers a practical look at what happened when mine was put to the test.

Sometimes the best way to learn about your food storage is to use it.

If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love for you to leave a review and share it with a friend.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to this Prepared Life Podcast, a podcast for women where preparedness feels peaceful, practical, and possible. I'm Alison, and together we're building calmer, more resilient lives, one pantry shelf, one skill, an intentional step at a time. Guys, my kids ate my entire pantry. Not exactly. That's a little drastic, but they did eat a lot of it and they completely decimated some items. So story time, about let's see, seven-ish months ago, uh, my oldest kid one called and she's like, hey mom, what do you think about us moving back home for a little while? We have what we call the cottage. It's just a it's a shed turned tiny house. It has electricity, it has no running water or kitchen or anything. It's really just guest sleeping space. And she's like, you know, we want to save some money. Uh, we also would love to just reconnect. Kid one lived about eight hours away. So uh, you know, she's not close. We don't get to see her often. And she said, you know, since Michael died, we haven't had a lot of time together except for holidays and things like that. And she's like, I would just love to spend some time with you. We want to save some money. And, you know, we're thinking about some different places to move to. I was like, of course, you can come back home. So kid one, it's 25. She moved back home with her significant other. And then kid three heard kid one was moving home and said, Well, can I come home too? And I was like, Well, the only place I have for you to sleep is the garage, which does have a bed in it, but it also has two freezers and a bunch of storage bins. So she was like, that's fine. And so she moved into the garage. Kid four was still at home at that time because she was still 17. So all of my kids and their significant others moved back in and unintentionally ate most of my layer two pantry. So here's what happened as different people were going down into creepy basement to, you know, get things or restock things in the kitchen. Things were getting taken from the wrong locations. And, you know, I have a marker board where if you take something, you write down what you took, so I know to replace it. Well, some people, you know, haven't lived here, didn't even know that was a thing. And so stuff wasn't getting written down, stuff wasn't getting rotated first in, first out, layer three foods were getting taken instead of layer two, it was just a mess. And so I was watching this happen and I was getting a little frustrated. And then I was like, you know what? Let it go. I'm gonna see what happens when instead of three people eating my layer two pantry, I have seven people eating through my layer two pantry. And so this is all about what I ran out of, what I have too much of, and what I think my next steps are for my home food storage, my home food supply when I am moving into an empty nest season of my life. If you are unfamiliar with my three-layer food storage system, I suggest you go ahead and look at the episodes about layer one, layer two, and layer three. That's gonna give you kind of a rundown of what my three-layered food storage system looks like. So layer one is my kitchen pantry. It's what we are eating right now, it's what's in the fridge and the kitchen cabinets and my canisters and growing in the garden and things like that. My layer two pantry is my home grocery store. This is how I restock my kitchen. And layer three is my long-term layer. It's my something really bad happens layer. These are long-term storage foods that will sit there anywhere from two to 10-ish years, and then they rotate into my kitchen. Layer two and layer three are similar foods, but they're packaged differently. Layer three is in myler bags and number 10 cans. Layer two is more original packaging, glass jars, things are stored in storage bins and things like that. And both layer two and layer three are in what I call creepy basement because 1927 farmhouse is a little creepy down there. Kid one thinks the is it the grudge or the ring? I don't know, one of those movies, the creepy movies with the thing that comes out. Anyway, there's a dirt area in the basement where the grudge girl or whatever is gonna come out and get everybody. Everyone's going downstairs and they're grabbing things. And, you know, rather than grabbing a can of beans from the working pantry shelves, for some reason someone would go over to the cases and open up a case and grab one can. So it's things like that were happening in my layer two and my layer three pantry. Things were getting moved and disorganized. And rather than get frustrated and angry about it, I really just wanted to see what happens. We're gonna be empty nest soon. If we are not already when you are listening to this episode, here's what I ran out of, and here's what I had too much of. For the first time in my life, I ran out of flour. I have never ran out of flour before, guys. So I keep, I think, five five-gallon buckets of flour in my layer two pantry. I do not keep flour in my layer three pantry. I keep wheat berries. I do have flour in number 10 cans, but I typically don't store, like I'm not gonna go out and buy more of that. I just have wheat berries and a wheat grinder for layer three. But for the first time ever, I ran out of flour. I totally underestimated how much everyone was gonna bake. Uh, they thoroughly enjoyed being in my kitchen, which pretty much has anything you might want or need. I've spent 20 years building this kitchen and what is in it. So, you know, they would always say things like, Oh, you have everything. And it's funny because I remember saying that exact same thing to my grandmother and my mother. So a little bit of pride in me that I have, you know, a good working kitchen. But I underestimated how much they were gonna bake. Flour ran out of flour. I ran out of a lot of baking supplies, I ran out of powdered sugar, I ran out of brown sugar, I ran out of some spices, which I typically don't run out of spices because I buy those in bulk and jar them and vacuum seal them. So I need to completely revamp and inventory my spice racks and my spice shelves. I ran out of almost all canned meats. Canned chicken, canned tuna. There's a couple cans of canned salmon down there, but I did not run out of spam. No one seems to want to eat the spam. I don't have a lot of spam in my storage, but I do have some. I ran out of almost all condiments. I ran out of ketchup, rant, mayonnaise, barbecue sauce. Now, I don't keep a lot of those condiments in my short-term layer in my home grocery store, but I did keep a year's worth for the three people who were living in this house. Uh, it's been, I think, let's see, six months now of everyone living here. So condiments are gone. I ran out of coffee probably four times over. There were multiple coffee drinkers in the house, so I ran out of coffee beans on a pretty regular basis. Uh, we ran out of tomato sauce and tomato paste, which I store in incredibly large amount of tomato sauce. So I don't know quite how that happened. Well, I know how it happened. My kids ate it all. But my kids do a lot of cooking. I've taught my kids cooking skills, so they cook a lot from scratch. I also ran out of pasta, which is not something I store a lot of because I don't eat it, but I know my kids do, so I do keep it on hand. I do still have pasta in my layer three pantry, but only because they they didn't know it was there. The layer three pantry isn't visible because it's in mylar bags and it's in totes and it's in buckets. So they didn't know I had pasta in my layer three pantry. I ran out of laundry detergent, which that one surprised me because I know I had at least two years worth of laundry detergent on my shelf, but seven people is a lot of laundry and they were all doing their own laundry. I was not doing their laundry, their adults, but ran out of laundry detergent, which I found incredibly odd. Things I had too much of moving into a season of an empty nest here in our North Idaho homestead. I am starting to ask myself some questions on what should my food storage look like right now. But we have too much canned fruit, we have too many canned beans in varieties that we don't eat as often. We eat a lot of black beans and we eat a lot of pinto beans, but I realized uh when I was down there the other day, we have a lot of white beans on the shelf, we have a lot of chickpeas on the shelf. So I really need to either store less of those or start making more recipes that use those more. Uh, we have too many home canned experiments. One of the things that I always tell new canners is when you find a new recipe, try and make a small batch to make sure that you like it before you can a large amount of it. But my problem is that I always find recipes and I'm like, oh, that sounds great. And I may not be making 20 jars of it, but seven jars times 10 recipes is a lot. And then if we don't like it, I end up having a lot of wasted food. So I have a lot of new recipes, experiments on my shelf of home canned food that we're not necessarily gonna eat. I think I may start canning less, freezing more. I'm not quite sure there. I'm gonna think about that one. As we come into this new season in my home food supply, this empty nest season, I am going to completely reorganize creepy basement. I'm going to clean it and declutter it and redo different areas and where things are stored and how they're stored. And specifically with layer three, I keep asking myself, can I have too much in layer three? My layer three pantry is my something really bad has happened layer. And I know that if something really bad were to happen, all of the kids are gonna and spouses are gonna congregate back here at the house. So I will be back up to a larger number of people. Can I have too much in layer three? Should I store less in layer three? These are all questions I'm asking myself. And should I change how I do my food storage now that the kids are gone? I think I'm definitely going to be storing less in my home grocery store in my layer two because I want to be able to rotate that food through. I don't want it sitting on the shelf and expiring and going bad. I don't want anything going rancid. It's still really important to me that our nutritional content is high and that we're not wasting our money. I want to be a good steward of the finances that I have available to me. I am most likely going to be storing less in my layer two pantry, still debating on that layer three pantry. Uh, and we aren't here yet, but it is in the back of my mind and it is something that I'm thinking about. We are nowhere near retirement, but it is something I want to be mindful of because I don't want to leave a mess for my children. Um, so what does a layer three pantry look like? And at what age do I need to change that? At some point, you know, we are no longer going to be the destination if a catastrophic event happens because we're just gonna be too old. So I don't know what a layer three pantry looks like as we, you know, 10 years, 15, 20 years from now, but I do know that like when my grandmother died, it was me, my husband, and my brother who cleaned out her house. It was a lot of stuff. She was not a prepper, so it was not prepper stuff, but she was a home canner. She gardened and she had her things and just the things from life. I don't want to leave a mess in creepy basement that once I have died, my kids have to clean up. So that's something else that as I come into this empty nest season, I am also thinking about the season that comes after and what does that look like for a home food supplies? If you have thought about that or have taken action steps, if you're, you know, listening to this on YouTube, please leave a comment. I would love to hear what you have done, or send me a message over on Instagram. I would love to hear what steps you have taken as you've neared retirement or gone into retirement and how has your food storage been impacted by that? Did my kids eat my entire food storage? No, but they did go through a large amount and a huge chunk of it, most of which I am not going to replace because empty nest. So beneficial, happy, unintentional accident. And thank you for listening today. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and leave me a review that will help other women find this prepared life podcast because together we are building calmer, more resilient lives, one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step at a time.