5 Food Storage Mistakes Beginners Make (And How to Avoid Them)

Building a home food supply doesn't have to be complicated—but there are a few common mistakes that can make the process more expensive, frustrating, and overwhelming than it needs to be.

In this episode, I'm sharing the five biggest mistakes beginners make when starting their food storage journey and, more importantly, how to avoid them. These simple shifts can save you money, reduce waste, and help you build a food supply that actually works for your family.

If you're just getting started with preparedness, this episode will help you build a home food supply with confidence.

Resources:

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

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

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

Home Food Storage Book:
https://amzn.to/3T22Fh2

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey friend, grab a cup of tea. We are going to talk about the five biggest mistakes beginners make when they are starting their home food supply. Welcome to this prepared life, 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, skill and intentional step at a time. If you are new, this episode is going to save you money. It is going to save you frustration, and it is going to save you wasted space. These are the five biggest mistakes beginners make when they are building. Mistake number one: storing food you don't eat means you can't rotate it into your kitchen pantry. Food is wasted, sits there, loses its nutritional content. Instead of storing food you don't eat, open up your kitchen cabinets and buy more of the shelf stable food that you see already on your shelf. If you see rice by rice, if you see pasta buy pasta, if you see canned meats or canned fruit or canned vegetables, buy canned meats or canned fruit or canned vegetables. Buy the foods that you already see on your shelves. Number two, storing food you don't know how to cook or you don't know how to rehydrate. Beans and rice is what everyone thinks about when we think of proper food, proper pantry. It's buckets of beans and rice in a basement, in a barn, in a garage, sitting there. Beans and rice take a large amount of water to rehydrate. Emergency meals, these freeze-dried emergency meals, all of those take water to rehydrate. If you have never done that before, if you have never cooked beans, if you have never cooked rice or you have never rehydrated freeze-dried food or dehydrated foods, an emergency is not the time to practice that. An emergency is the time where you are doing tasks that you have practiced that you know how to do. Mistake number three is storing food that needs rehydrated, but not storing water. This is a big, big mistake, guys. If you are storing beans, rice, oats, freeze-dried food, dehydrated food, emergency meals that are just add water, instant oatmeal, all of those things need water. If you aren't storing water, if you don't have water bottles, or if you haven't identified a source of water locally that you can filter and you have the supplies to filter that water and haul that water because water is heavy, how are you going to cook that food? Make sure that you have water storage. I just like I suggest layering your food storage with my three-layered food storage system. I also suggest layering your water storage, having water stored at home, having water you've purchased in water bottles that you rotate through, having water filters and water sources identified locally. All of those layers are important in case one of them is compromised. Number three, storing foods that need rehydrated, but not having the water to rehydrate them is a big, big no-no. Number four, wasting money by repackaging everything. Okay, story time. When I first started prepping, mylar was exciting. I don't know why it was like a craft project for my kitchen. And I just I just started mylaring everything. I was putting flour in mylar. Here's a story within a story. Flour is probably the number one ingredient that I get messages about on Instagram. How do I store flour? And I don't know why people, it's like they hyper-focus on flour the same way we all hyper-focused on toilet paper in 2020. I don't know why flour is such a big deal, but it is to a lot of people. And I don't actually store flour in my long-term layer at all. I store wheat berries. I do store flour in my layer too. Back to the original story. When I first started jumping into mylaring food and building out that long-term food storage layer, I was packaging flour up like crazy. The thing with flour is it goes rancid very quickly. It loses almost all its nutritional content as soon as it's ground. So it's just sitting there in a bag with no nutrition. I was storing all of this flour in mylar bags that I was essentially putting in the bag and then opening it up to refill my kitchen canister. And it was such a waste. It was a waste of mylar. It was a waste of an oxygen absorber. And I know those things are not super expensive, but I want you to think big picture of a food storage. And over time, and over many ingredients and opening many mylar bags, all of those mylar bags and oxygen absorbers are gonna add up to a larger amount. So individually, no, a mylar bag and oxygen absorber not expensive. Altogether, over years and time, yes, the expense adds up. So I was wasting money, I was wasting my time, and I was like, what am I doing? So I learned a hard lesson that way. I don't actually use mylar in my layer one or my layer two food storage at all. I only use mylar in my layer three food storage. And it took me years to make my three-layered food storage system and figure out the rotation and turn that into something that really worked for me, for my family, to create no waste and maximize nutritional content. So when I wrote home food supply, all of that knowledge and information went into that book. It really was the book that I wished I had when I first started building a home food supply. Don't waste money repackaging everything. If you're going to eat it, don't waste the mylar. If you're going to rotate it in within a year, don't waste the mylar. Instead, save the mylar for layer three. All right, mistake number five, and this is a big one. A lot of people do this, is we start thinking least likely first. When we are planning our preparedness journey, when we are planning our food storage, when we are planning our preps, we start thinking end of the world, zombies, nuclear attacks. Can these things happen? Yes, possibly. Some more likely than others. Are they likely to happen? Possibly. I have plans for some of those. Are they most likely to happen? No, not most likely to happen. For me, most likely to happen, power outage, a winter storm. Neighbors have told us that the longest our area was without power was I think two or three weeks once. Huge winter storm, wildfires. Like we are due for a wildfire. We haven't had one, but all summer long, my phone, dings, evacuation here, evacuation there. Wildfires are common here. What is most likely for you in your area with your family in your geographical location? Is it tornadoes? Is it hurricanes? Is it wildfires? Is it financial hardship? Is it illness? Maybe you have a child or a family member with a chronic illness, and whatever comes with that, that's a most likely scenario that you can prep for. Don't start with the least likely. I know that there's a little bit of fun and preparedness in prepping for these end-of-the-world things. There's cool gear and all this stuff, but practical, peaceful, possible. Okay. Start with your most likely. Plan accordingly for what is most likely to happen for you. Let's recap these five mistakes. Soring food that you don't eat, number one. Number two, storing food you don't know how to cook or rehydrate. Number three, storing food that needs rehydrated, but you don't have any water in your storage. Number four, repackaging everything and wasting those resources. And number five, thinking least likely before most likely in your preparedness planning. If you were new, here are three things that you can do right now to get you started building a peaceful, practical, and possible home food supply and preparedness journey. Buy a case of water. Number one. Two, open your kitchen cabinets and buy more of what you see. Number three, learn skills. The more you know, the more you can store. Ingredients, store better than convenience foods. This will not happen overnight for you, but it will happen much faster than you think. I appreciate your reviews. I appreciate you following or subscribing. When you do that, when you leave reviews, it helps more women find this Prepared Life podcast. Together, we're building calmer, more resilient lives, one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step at a time. Thanks for listening.