My Current Grocery Shopping Plan

It’s taken me a bit to figure out a food storage plan.  Of course, it took me a good 3 or more years at my last house, so I figure 9 months isn’t too bad!

We have a large pantry in our kitchen, and while it’s behind our table, which I don’t adore I do LOVE all the space.  The shelve aren’t super deep, but I’m learning to roll with the punches.  I mean, I would’ve DIED for this kind of space in CA, right?  It’s all about gratitude. 🙂

Someone went a little crazy when canned salmon went on sale.

ANYWHO….

I have all of our LDS cannery items on the top left shelf, but I have tried to limit that to stuff we actually use (refried beans, apples, carrots, onions, cocoa, fruit drink mix some oats — I do have oats and wheat in big bins on the floor, I don’t think you can see them, but I also have some #10 cans of wheat also, in case of emergency).  Some of it is in the super awkward corners of our kitchen, some is on top of the cupboards (although I am hoping to eliminate that, most of that is just excess, and the things I only plan to use in an emergency (canned flour, or sugar or canned dry beans) is under the guest bed.  It’s taken a while to figure that part out, but I decided there was no reason to have our real “emergency” food taking up room in our super accessible pantry.  I always want to store more then I have room for, and THAT is a fact. 🙂  I’m also hoping to can some chicken soon, and with the 9 tomato plants we’re growing I am guessing we’ll have some of those to can too.  {fingers crossed}

BUT, back to the stuff that I’m rotating through on a regular basis.

Once a month I go through and count everything.  Drew made me a fancy excel spreadsheet that makes that super easy.  It looks like this.  I’m not sure how he got it so that it adds it up for me (it takes what’s in the “want” column, minuses the “have” and the answer is in the “need” column), but I love it.  It saves a ton of time to just type in the numbers and then just see it all there.  I’m always adjusting my “want” number.  I just try to assess how much we use each item.  I think we used to use more refried beans, beans until I started using the dry ones from the cannery more, so I have decreased that number.  Some of it is just how much I have room for.

Then, I go through and highlight the ones that we are in need of.  Red are things I need to buy right now, sale or no sale. I won’t buy a lot of these items, but enough to have on hand.  I HATE to run out of stuff!  I also highlight in green things that I am NOT allowed to buy.  I have obviously over-bought on those items.  It’s kind of my e-slap-on-the-wrist.  Overbuying has been a big issue for me in the past.  for instance, I right now have 22 boxes of cereal.  It’s excessive, since I try to limit cold cereal days to once a week during the school year.

Then, I write down the items on my grocery list.

Now, I have a grocery list that lives on my fridge.