Using Our Food Storage

At the beginning of this year we ran into some temporary financial trouble. We could not spend our normal amount on anything, including groceries. Although we live in a small 2-bedroom apartment, I had created a small food storage, and I decided that we would live off of that for a month or two while we got back on our feet.

The reason why our financial trouble was only temporary was because Gerson still has his job, so we needed to hang onto his next few paychecks and spend as little as possible from them while we revamped and reorganized our checkbook and budget. Since we had a paycheck to look forward to, I saved money by only buying needed fresh food like bread and milk. I used any frozen meat, fruit and canned vegetables and fruit, and boxed food first before buying any fresh ingredients. That got us through the first two months of the year, and by March we were good to dive into our new budget and I could begin to rebuild our food storage.

I used to think that it wasn't possible to have a food storage in an apartment. You see, I had been raised by my mom, and her food storage is quite impressive. So I was going off of that when I got married and moved into apartments that had hardly any room to store a regular amount of food, let alone food storage. So for the first two years of my marriage we did not have a food storage at all. I just hoped that should anything happen we would be able to get ourselves to my parents' house and live with them. (Even today now that I have a food storage, getting to my family to my parents' house is still plan A so that we can be together as a family during emergencies/the last days.)

When I was pregnant with Benjamin I read a parenting book titled, Mom! I'm Home! It was written by my aunt's mother Rosanne Buhler Orgill. One section of the book talks about food storage and she advises to rotate your food storage by placing your oldest food items first in line and using those when you cook and replacing them with new items in the back of the line. I started doing that by slowly buying more than I needed of canned and boxed  ingredients. Now when I grocery shop, I buy the amount that I need for the meal that I am making, but I already have some in my pantry, it's just going to replace what I use.

So technically I am always using our food storage, so what I mean by us living off of our food storage for the past two months is that  I wasn't replacing the food that we ate. I couldn't so that we could save money. Now I am rebuilding my food storage again. Situations like this are why we have been taught to have a food storage, to be prepared for any storms  that come our way. I am grateful that I had a food storage prepared. If not, we wouldn't have starved, but we would have had some interesting meals and would have had to rely on neighbors and family. This experience strengthened my testimony that our leaders know what they are talking about when they teach us how to be prepared. And if the temporal preparedness is correct and important, than the spiritual preparedness is too.