Prepared: Long-Term Pantry Storage Tips

In the world of prepping, food storage is a pretty important part of the puzzle. When I decided to create a long-term storage pantry I wanted to ensure that we had several months’ worth of food in case of many different types of emergencies that could happen.

As I delve into the prepping world I’ve discovered there are two types of preppers.

The first keeps all their cards close to their chest and never reveals what they have.

And the second, shares tons of information in the hopes of helping to educate others.

The first type is scared of people coming for their supplies in an emergency but the second isn’t worried about that if they empower others to support themselves. I think I fall in the middle, while I won’t share quantities of what we have, however I do want to help share what I’ve learned if you’re on the journey of learning yourself.

I have two key things that I wanted to share: how to store food long-term and how to keep track of what you’re storing.

How To Store Food Long-Term

In my 8 Steps to Become a Prepper blog, I shared what is in our pantry and what I’m using to store the items so I thought I’d re-share here.

Here are some items that we’ve decided to store:

• Beans
• Lentils
• Split Peas
• Pasta
• Rice
• Canned Veggies
• Canned Fruit
• Dehydrated Meat, Veggies & Fruit
• Canned Sardines & Oysters
• Flour (Almond & Coconut)
• Coconut Sugar
• Salt
• Baking Soda

The most confusing thing that I found when researching how to store food was when to use oxygen absorbers vs. silica gel. The way that I understand food storage with these items is if food has no moisture in it then use oxygen absorbers but if it needs a bit of moisture to remain as it’s current consistency then use silica gel.

I purchased glass mason jars from Canadian Tire and then oxygen absorbers and silica gel packs from Amazon.

How To Keep Track Of Your Storage

The next thing that I looked for was how to keep track of what storage items we have in our pantry and expiry dates. Since I’m not accesing our storage area on a regular basis there is a worry that food will expire before we use it. I’ve also purchased items that I can incorporate into our regular meal plans so nothing will go to waste in case an emergency doesn’t happen before the expiry date of food.

In one of the Facebook prepping groups I’m a part of someone recommended the app Inventory Wolf.

What I love about the app is that I can make checklist for different preparedness items.

I’ve set up my different caches and then within each cache I have a checklist of items that I already have or need to get. For the Shelter-In-Place cache I have the list of our pantry inventory, the number of items we have of each item and expiry dates. I paid for the premium membership so that I can receive notifications as we get near to an expiry date.

Below is a screenshot from their website of what the app interface looks like.