Building a Prepper Pantry That Works with NO Waste

When you hear the words "prepper pantry," what comes to mind?

For many people, it's buckets of rice and beans collecting dust in a basement. But long-term food storage doesn't have to look like that.

In this episode, we're talking about layer three of my three-layer food storage system: your long-term food storage. I'll walk you through what belongs in this layer, how I package and rotate my food, and why I believe your prepper pantry should be built around the foods your family actually eats.

We talk about:
• What layer three food storage really is
• How much long-term food storage you actually need
• The best foods for long-term storage
• Packaging with Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers
• Why I store recipes instead of random foods
• How all three layers of food storage work together
• Common mistakes to avoid when building a prepper pantry

If long-term food storage has ever felt overwhelming, I hope this episode helps you simplify the process and build a system that works for your family and your real life.

Resources:

My NEW book Home Food Storage: A Preparedness Plan for Creating and Using an Emergency Food Supply is available for pre order! It ships in September of 2026 just in time for National Preparedness Month. 

My go to place for mylar and oxygen absorbers, use code TPL for a discount

I have been freeze drying for years now and it is a huge part of my layer three pantry. This is the freeze dryer I purchased many years ago.

Find me at:

Website:
https://www.thispreparedlife.com/

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https://www.instagram.com/thispreparedlife/

Join the TPL Membership Community:
https://www.thispreparedlife.com/community

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

What do you think of when you hear the words proper pantry? If you are thinking dusty buckets of rice and beans shoved in a basement or in the backs of closets, you are not alone. Most people envision wasted food, wasted money, and wasted space when they think about a proper pantry. Welcome to this prepared life, a podcast for women where preparedness feels peaceful, practical, and possible. I'm Alison, and together we're building a calmer, more resilient life, one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step at a time. Let's debunk that picture of what a proper pantry is. You can have food storage and it does not have to contain MREs, meals ready to eat, unless you want it to. If you're new here, I use a three-layered system in my food storage. Layer one is your kitchen pantry. It is the food you are eating right now. Layer two is your short-term storage or your grocery store. And go ahead and look back at past episodes to learn more about layer two and layer one. This is part three of a series. Layer three is your long-term storage. And this is also the layer I will sometimes call my something really bad has happened layer. If you missed the previous episodes in this series, check those out to get yourself started building your home food supply. Let's talk about layer three today so that you can build a proper pantry that works for your family. When I first started jumping into preparedness, uh it was overwhelming. I didn't quite know where I fit in, hopping on the internet and searching, you know, came up with a lot of information about prepping, but not a lot of information I as a woman actually related to. So that's where this prepared life came from. And I have spent a lot of time, many years, building the food storage system that I use today. I define layer three as anything that I'm going to store between two or can store up to 30 years. Just because something can store for 30 years doesn't mean I'm going to let it sit for 30 years. My layer three consists of freeze-dried foods, and these are usually in mylar or number 10 cans. It consists of number 10 cans of dehydrated foods, and it also consists of freeze-dried meals that I have either purchased or freeze-dried myself, and then a lot of dry goods in buckets. How much you store in your layer three is an entirely personal question. For some of us, we are going to be okay with just having a two-week supply of emergency meals, and that you're going to consider that fully prepped. Other people might be prepping for more longer-term scenarios, and you're going to want many years' worth of food in your long-term storage. So, what you are prepping for and kind of your mindset and how you look at what is a likely scenario to happen is going to impact how much you store in your prepper pantry. Packaging becomes the most important for this layer of your food storage because these foods are going to be sitting. You are not going to have eyes on them all the time. You are not rotating them first in, first out. So how you package these foods is extremely important. In my layer three pantry, I primarily use mylar combined with oxygen absorbers or without, depending on the food, and number 10 cans. So those are the main packaging methods that I suggest for a long-term food storage. Rotation of your long-term food storage is pretty similar to the rotation of layer two. If you missed that episode, you can go ahead and go back and listen to it. It just takes a little bit longer time. Depending on the food I'm storing, it's going to be in my food storage anywhere from two to 30 years. And I'm going to, you know, really say two to 10 years because I am not one to just let food sit. I like to rotate it. Let's maximize that nutritional content because I want to feed my family nutritionally sound food. I'm going to rotate that food anywhere between two and 10 years, depending on what it is. Things like uh powdered milk can actually go bad in as little as three months if it's not stored at the proper temperature. So I do rotate powdered milk, things that might have a little bit of fat or have a tendency to go rancid within that two-ish year mark. Whereas things like oats or popcorn, uh, wheat berries, those things can last up to 30 years. So I will rotate those around the 10-ish year mark. And I track all that on a spreadsheet, which tracking is going to be an entirely another episode. So stay tuned for that one. It's really important that you store what you eat so that you can eat what you store. 50 buckets of beans and rice in your basement are going to do you very little good if you don't eat a lot of beans and rice and you don't know how to cook them. There is a lot of people will say, well, if you get hungry enough, you'll eat anything. And yes, if you get hungry enough, we will eat anything, right? But I am not building a food storage so that my family can get hungry enough to eat anything. I am building a food storage because I want it to provide for my family in case of an emergency. But I also know that my most likely emergencies are not a zombie apocalypse. My most likely emergencies are wildfires, winter snowstorms, power outages, and things like that. So I rotate my food storage accordingly. And that is where it becomes really important that I am actually storing food I eat, my family eats, and I know how to cook in my long-term food storage. When I rotate something from layer three, it is either gonna go into my layer two pantry, if it's a big bucket, it's gonna go into my layer two pantry and it'll become the working bucket that I talked about in the episode about layer two. If it's a smaller mylar bag or a number 10 can of something, it's gonna rotate directly into my kitchen because I'm gonna use those things fairly quickly. That is a difference in how layer three rotates versus layer two is where it goes. For me, that really depends on what it is. How you store these foods is also gonna depend on how fast you can use them. If you are prepping for two people, you are probably not gonna be able to use a five-gallon bucket of oats in a very timely manner. We eat a lot of oats, so I know that I can go through a five-gallon bucket of oats in a timely manner. So I store them that way. But if if we didn't eat a lot of oats, I would store them in smaller quantities in Mylar bags so that when I open one, I'm not having to manage and deal with a five-gallon bucket at one time. I'm maybe only having to deal with a pound or two at a time. Store food not only that you eat and that you know how to cook, but store it in quantities that you can consume in a timely manner. In layer three of my home food supply, I prep by recipes. And what do I mean by that? Like you can prep by calorie count, add up the the number of calories that you're gonna get from a food item and just store a set amount per person. You can prep by pounds of food per person. I prep by recipes, and I mainly do that because I want to be able to rotate that food into my kitchen. If I am prepping food that I eat and I am prepping food that I know how to cook, it makes more sense for me to prep my food by recipes. I will comb through my recipes and look at them and see which ones can I customize and use or make solely from long-term food storage foods or from layer two foods and layer three foods combined together. And this doesn't look like a meal plan on day two of the zombie apocalypse. We're having oatmeal for breakfast. That's not what it looks like. It's more bulk purchases. So I'm gonna lay out a calendar uh or a meal planning. I have some worksheets that I use, and all my worksheets are in my book, Home Food Storage. You can take a look at that. I'll link it in the description. But I will lay out, you know, my meal planner and I'm gonna write oatmeal however many times that I can make a bulk bag of oatmeal. Let's say it's 14. And so I know that I have 14 days, 14 meals worth of oatmeal in my food storage. So that plan is just more general. And I will also include in that everything I need to cook that oatmeal or serve that oatmeal. So, you know, it's gonna be if I plan out 30 days worth of oatmeal or 30 days worth of spaghetti, I'm gonna include the noodles and the tomato sauce and the freeze-dried meat that I need to make that meal. So really sit down and look at your recipes and go, can I make this from shelf stable ingredients? And if not, maybe it's not a great choice for a meal to be making during an emergency or a meal from your long-term food storage. Really look at the recipes you do make and which ones can be customized for that. Another myth that I think really overwhelms and causes people to struggle with building a home food supply is that each layer is gonna be used individually. In an emergency, and I'm talking a large catastrophic emergency here. All three layers of my food storage are going to work in tandem together. Are there things in layer one that we are gonna focus on eating first? Absolutely. Are there things in layer two that we are gonna need to focus on preserving in some way so they don't go bad in the freezers? Absolutely. But all three of those layers are gonna work together to make that oatmeal that I talked about earlier. I might be using the bucket of oats from layer three, but maybe I'm using the brown sugar from layer two and the fresh fruit that we need to eat up in layer one. Everything is gonna work together. So don't look at your layer three food storage and think this has to solely feed my family. How can all three of your layers work together to feed your family? The best foods for storage in your layer three pantry are gonna be canned goods. And these do need to be rotated. Rotate them first in, first out so that you know that nothing is going rancid, especially in the case of anything that has fat in it or canned meats, things like that. Those dates are dates that are set by the manufacturer. They're not actually law. Like there's no law about putting an expiration date on canned foods except for infant formula. But rotating those foods is super important just because it's gonna maximize the nutritional content and it's gonna create no waste in your food storage system. Canned goods, dry goods with 10% or less of moisture are foods that store well, and that's like oats, rice, beans, popcorn, things like that. Low-fat foods or foods that are not oily. Coffee beans do not store well long term because they're an oily food. Instant coffee stores great long term. It's not an oily food. Look at the foods you eat. Is there an alternative that you can store? Or is there a skill that you can learn? I know some people store green coffee beans and then they have learned to roast them on their own, so they still have access to coffee beans. Freeze-dried foods are great for long-term storage and also some dehydrated foods. And I say some dehydrated foods because some dehydrated foods do still contain fat. Beef jerky have a good amount of oil content in there, so those are not going to store well for 30 years. Can you store it for a couple years? Absolutely. So look at the dehydrated foods that you are storing to consider if they are a candidate for long-term food storage. Look at their oil content, look at their moisture content. In addition, home dehydrated foods tend to have a higher moisture content than commercially dehydrated foods. At home, we don't have the capability to spray dehydrate or remove as much of the moisture as commercial facilities do. So that is something to keep in mind. If you are storing home dehydrated foods long term in Mylar, they really should be brittle and crack when you break them. A question that you can ask yourself about long-term food storage foods, it's not can I store this food? It's should I store this food? Just because you can doesn't mean it's going to last as long as you want it to. So really look at the oil content, the fat content, the moisture content of these foods before you decide to start filling up Mylar bags. I made a big mistake when I first started prepping and you know, I just started filling mylar up with flour. And flour can store in mylar bags. It stores fine in mylar bags. But flour also loses its nutritional content incredibly fast. I actually don't store flour in my long-term pantry. I will only store wheat berries in my layer three pantry. But what I found kept happening is I would need to restock my kitchen. And so I'd be opening these mylar bags of flour to restock my kitchen. And I was wasting my time, I was wasting my energy, I was wasting these mylar bags, and I was wasting the oxygen absorbers. So it's not can I store this food? It's should I store this food? If you are brand new to food storage, I'm gonna encourage you to go back to the episode on layer one and start there because layer one is the most important layer of your food storage. It is gonna be the most used layer of your food storage. Go back and listen to the episode on layer two because layer two is gonna be the layer of your food storage that saves you the most money in your home food supply. Before you start on layer three, if you are in the middle of building andor maintaining any of these layers, layer three is great to just start adding slowly to. It builds up way faster than you think. And this is a slow and steady race, not a fast race. Here are six things that you can do or ask yourself as you get started on your layer three pantry. One, identify foods that you eat that will store well long term. Not that can store long term, but that you should store long term. Look for recipes that can be altered to use dehydrated ingredients, freeze-dried ingredients, or dried foods instead of their fresh counterparts. Buy in bulk to save money. Ask yourself, how am I going to package this? And have a plan ahead of time. I don't know how many messages I get from people that say, hey, I bought a bag of oats or a bag of beans or rice three years ago and it's been sitting there ever since and now it has bugs in it. Or it's been sitting there and I don't know if it's still good. That's hard for me to know because I don't know what temperature you have stored it in. Has it gotten wet? All of these things. If you have a plan for how you're gonna package the food you're purchasing, it's gonna happen and not sit in your pantry and go bad. So have you purchased the mylar bags? Have you purchased oxygen absorbers? Do you have the buckets or storage bins that you're gonna stack your Mylar bags in? Figure out how you're gonna package this food so that you are ready when it gets there. This could be a whole episode on its own, but where are you gonna store this food? Past episode, I talk about the five factors that impact food storage. And past, I mean way, way past years and years ago. Maybe I should probably do another episode on the five factors that impact food storage. But where are you gonna store this food? Is it protected from temperature swings? Start looking around your house and identifying locations that you can stack some bins, or maybe build yourself a little pantry. Or if you are really short on space, start decluttering and identifying unused spaces in your home that you can instead use for your home food supply. And the next and last thing to start thinking about as you start buying food for your layer three prep or pantry is how am I going to track and rotate this? This again can be an entire episode on its own. Are you going to use a spreadsheet? Are you going to use pen and paper? Are you going to use an app? There's a lot of different ways that you can track what you have in storage, how much you have in storage, and also where you have it stored. Because if you can't find your food, you can't use your food. Like I mentioned earlier, if you are brand new and just getting started, you might want to start at layer three of your food storage. And I am gonna highly suggest you go back and start at layer one. Build that most important layer of your home food supply first, your 30-day kitchen pantry before you move on to your long-term food storage. Start by buying more of what you have in your kitchen cabinets, open up your pantry and just buy more of the shelf stable foods that you see. If you are feeling incredibly anxious or overwhelmed and really feel like you need something in your layer three storage, grab one of those 72-hour kits at Costco, maybe taste test a couple first to make sure you like it. But those emergency food kits are great to have on hand just as a supplement to your long-term food supplies. I don't personally keep a lot of those on hand. I do have some because I prefer to do my food storage from ingredients for rotation and nutritional content. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with the emergency food buckets that you can commercially buy. And if that is going to lessen your anxiety and lessen your overwhelm, go ahead and grab one of those and then move back to layer one and then build your layer two and three pantries. There is no wrong way to prep except to not prep at all. I hope that you learned a lot about long-term food storage and have a better understanding of how to build your prepper pantry. If you enjoyed today's episode, please leave me a review. Or if you are watching on YouTube, hit subscribe and let's help other women find this Prepared Life podcast so that together we can build calmer, more resilient lives, one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step a time. Thanks for listening.