My Food Storage Stockpile Tour | Building My Own Grocery Store in My Basement

Hello everyone, are you ready to see what a Frugal reservation looks like for a family of six? That's what this video is about. I'm Kristen from prosper with joy and I know this has been one of the most requested videos so today I finally have It's enough for you, it's a look inside my

food

storage

downstairs or my stash that I have so Let me clarify a couple of things before I start this walkthrough, so this is really what I think a Frugal Reservation looks like for a family of six. Everything was built within my monthly budget of $475.

I don't have separate budgets set aside to stock up on this is just part of what I am buying when I see a good deal and sales, I am stocking up at that time and I will clarify that there have been two. In separate cases where I added to my stash last year, I set aside a couple hundred dollars and used it to buy some larger items like laundry detergent and canned meat, which was a specific accumulation purchase and then on my birthday number 40, a couple of months. My family surprised me with a stocking party basically and they gave me 40 items of different things so one sister gave me 40 cans of cream of chicken soup and another sister gave me 40 cans of tomatoes and I got 40 pounds of sugar and just all these different things, which was great and they knew me very well and I loved it so if you have a birthday coming up maybe that's an idea you want to think about but this is really just basic

food

storage

.

Frugal reserves, these are things that we use it regularly um, you won't see anything crazy or overly complex. I've really built this up over the last two years, I would say I've always had some kind of reserve, but in the last two years I intentionally went out and started to build this reserve. I made lists. I looked at what our family actually ate. I made checklists and started slowly, methodically, and intentionally. I think that's something important. I intentionally built the reserve now according to my baby. storage steps, I'm at the three to six mark and within our stock and the three to six month mark, some things are around three months, some things are six, some things are a year, but I would say averaging out it's in the range from three to six. six month range and my long term goal is actually to have my family within the six to 12 month range now remember this is not all I use either.

There are separate

tour

s that I've already done of my work pantry upstairs that I use all the time and that shows you inside my freezer and then there's one of our toiletries and cleaning products and all that kind of stuff, so when you watch them and then watch this video all together, it should give you a good View of what our stock is. I know you are curious. This is going to take a bit. I'm going to show you everything down here and explain what it is and how much I have and I'll just show you. all so you can get some ideas, it will take a little bit so grab a cup of sparkling water or coffee, chai tea, hot chocolate, whatever your drink of choice is and settle in and I hope you enjoy the

tour

of the reserves.

This part of my reservation is it. My

basement

is where most of my stash is, so I'll show you that it's divided into two sections. This is the first section here, right at the bottom of my stairs. It's an unfinished

basement

and our basement is kind of a mess, so for now I've got it organized and you're going to be able to see the stock section here, so let's start right here from the beginning. I have some extra detergent that I took here. These are old CD and DVD cases that I wasn't using, so I used them here for the reserve.

I have a complete case of these back teeth. These are disinfectant wipes here and they came in a pack of four. Sam authorized them for two dollars just when you couldn't later. I found disinfectant wipes everywhere, we had all of these and they had tons of them, so it was two dollars for four packs total, so I stocked up and it's been great to send to school and use around the house, and I have a lot of them. those that don't. I don't really have a shelf for this. I showed you this before. This is just that container for all my paper products.

My wax paper. All that kind of stuff right next door. Here, right next to it, is some of Sam's powdered laundry detergent. Now yes. I consider this to be a long-term amount. I have three barrels of this and it's powder, this isn't what I normally use but it's here as a backup in case of emergency and knowing it's powder I know it's going to last a long time so I only have it here if I need it and then my kids, if they've been around, drink a lot of applesauce in their cups, so that's one of the things I have.

I apologize for the lights as we do this tour, like I said, it's unfinished. basement and I'll do my best to make sure you can see everything in here, so the applesauce glasses are stacked back here. Each shelf has four stacked, so I have three shelves of that and a little more. I have a small shelf. of baking cocoa baking cocoa, as I discovered, it doesn't really expire or go bad, so I have six cans of that, all this is the cheapest price to find baking soda and a jar of pickles, okay, you I'm going to move. here and we'll go up to the next shelf, this is my next section right next to it here and I'll just give you a quick overview and then I'll explain everything here, a lot of people who've seen me. with a photo of these I asked where these shelves came from and my father-in-law had built these shelves years ago and in this house and left them to us when we bought the house from them, so we have been using the ones that are wonderful sturdy shelves, not very deep but Very sturdy and strong, which is great for storing many of my canned goods, which is what I mainly use them for.

I'll go back to the top and we'll talk to you. I checked it here from the reserve in this section, so I have a container that is my canning rings. You're not supposed to

store

your canning jars with rings on, so most of the time, once I've canned something, I take it off and just throw them in there until I need them along with new lids that I haven't used for candy, some more Clorox wipes, that's a box full of 9x13 baking pans, disposable aluminum pans, it's about halfway full and I have lids in there too.

I bought them years ago and they are wonderful when I give someone a meal there, you will see many of my canning jars that are not in use. I have about three sections right now that are not in use and they are all full of water, I actually learned this last year from The Provident Prepper and it was a great point that I had never thought about. They said canning jars take up the same amount of space whether they are full or empty, so why not? Fill them with water and use it as a backup water supply.

We're on a well, so when we lose power we lose water, so I thought that was really helpful and I thought, "Okay, I can do that." I didn't really treat it or anything that I thought was water to flush the toilets, I couldn't, it's just full and sitting on the shelves and then once a year I'll rinse them and refill them and just have that water as backup water, then it's okay and you. I can see what I canned this year from our garden on the next two shelves here with a little. I started using my grandmother's pressure cooker and worked to get better at it, so I have several shelves full of broth, those are quart jars right there.

It was very easy and a good way to get comfortable using a pressure cooker. We had a great year for jalapeños, so I have a lot of sugared jalapenos. I made cowboy candy this year, so I have them up there. I have a couple jars of green beans, not many, they didn't do well, but I have a lot of pickles that I made this year that were super easy to make. our cucumbers, our cucumbers grew very well, so I have spears and slices, I have quartz and I have pints, you can fit about two. quart jars and up or about three pints if you have them right there.

Our tomatoes did very well, there's a little more stock in the pint jars and then a lot of sauce right there again, these are about three behind for the sauce I made. I don't have good access to berries this year, so I've been buying jam. I try to always buy jam, which is jam, sugar and pectin, I eat exactly what I can make, so that's all the jam we have there and just piled up there. and our favorite flavors, my kids aren't really strawberry jam people, they would prefer raspberry or blackberry, so we have a lot of that with a little bit of blueberry.

I have one more shelf of canned goods this year, some more jalapenos and like I said a lot of salsa and then I canned a couple pints of sweet cherries, we had a good deal at Kroger and I wanted to try to do that. I had a cherry pitter so I went ahead and canned six pints, it was super easy and very delicious and I will definitely be making that again when we can get them so crossing over is the last bit of this year's sauce with a couple jars of an empty quart on this shelf.

I have an onion soup mix that we like to mix with burgers, so I have a couple boxes of that, some jars of peanuts, and then real lime. I bought this on Amazon. It's just a dried lime that actually helps me drink water. It's very simple to add and

store

s very well. You just need a Shake it. I love it so I keep it on hand and use it when I drink water. Going down to the next shelf. Here we'll continue down the left side and then I'll backtrack, so this is where you are. I'm going to start looking at some of the canned goods our family uses.

I have some pickles in there from before I started canning. These are our condiments. I grew up with Mexican vanilla in Texas, so I have this here. I actually have two jars, as you can see from the price tag, it's ten dollars for this big jar, so I love it and every time my mom comes over in the summer I always ask her to bring me vanilla, so I always get it. I have there, I have two more jars. the one on top some mayonnaise some ranch that didn't fit on top and again these are just one or two condiments that didn't necessarily fit on top there's a little bit of hot sauce and mustard and we have a little bit of enchilada sauce and refried beans that They're right under this shelf is where I can keep track of things very easily.

I know exactly how many are on the shelf and when something is missing. I know when to restock, so I have six of the larger ketchups. I have four syrups and four canning sprays. and six oils right here, this rack is probably a year's worth here, especially the oils I try to rotate, we use the oil a lot for popcorn and baking muffins and a few different things, so when I get a new one I put it in. in the back, as soon as I see a gap, I know I need to add one more and then the bottom shelf and in front I have two behind that shelf and then one stacked in front, this is all apple juice.

The best deal I can find on apple juice is at Kroger for $29, now it used to be 99 cents. My kids, I have four kids, go through about a bottle a week, not a lot, so I know that's what I need. find out when I'm doing that, so here we have two four six eight ten twelve fourteen sixteen eighteen, so that's three months. Supply right there of apple juice, which is great because it's stable and then it goes to the other one. On the bottom shelf we have some parmesan cheese. I need to get some more of those baked beans.

I stumbled upon canned sweet cherries for 79 cents at Kroger, so about a couple jars of that I usually make my own pasta sauce, but I think it's great to have on hand, so I have a couple of these minera marinara that I don't They have added sugar. There are some of my crushed tomatoes. I have more elsewhere, but this is where things fit, so I have some crushed tomatoes in there. the big jars then you go up and I have more smaller jars, these are the small diced tomatoes, which is my preference in tomatoes, some of the Rotel or Kroger brand of the diced ones with jalapenos, there are the green beans and then the peanut butter and these.

They go, they stack two up and they go three back, so I have 18 jars of peanut butter right there again, we eat two to three a month, but then when it's Christmas and I'm making Buckeyes, I'll easily go through six, so I probably need a little more, at least one more row of those to make a full year, but I keep turning it over the peanut butter there and then the last shelf on this wooden shelf is applesauce, this is one of the fruits that my children love. so I stocked up on this and this was one of the things that I stocked up on when I had that extra money that I had set aside.

I bought a lot of applesauce. I knew I couldn't can it so I went ahead and bought unsweetened applesauce for a long time, it was cheaper at Aldi. I recently discovered that it's cheaper to buy the three-pack of sugar-free Motts at Sam's, sothat's where I started buying it from now on, but you'll see a lot of applesauce and we estimate probably one or two jars of applesauce a week, that's what I imagine, so it's the shelves again here that you see, so this again is fine at the bottom of our steps when you walk into our basement on that wall.

This is where you will see all those things that children can search for and get. I'll take you around the corner. Here you will see it and I will show you the rest of my reservation. right, we're still in the basement, we're around the corner, this is a back wall here or inside, under the steps, we're working around our water heater and some of this is still a little bit of storage, but en These are shelves we got from Menards, you can buy them at many other places we had them in the basement of our old house and now we use them here and they work well.

I like that they are so sturdy that they can hold a lot. It's plywood so they could be stronger and start to warp. after a while, but we've never had a problem with any of them breaking despite all the things I stack on them, so these are the shelves, like I said, our water heaters here too, so I'm just going to try to move them. and I'll walk you through these shelves so you can see more of what's in my stash here, so let's go up to the top and we've got some dish detergent in there, there's some powdered dish detergent and, In fact, if you can turn to the side, you will see.

I have a couple more laundry detergent right there. I have a couple canning jars on top as well as our router where we keep an extra CD player that we need to take out and so these are my empty canning jars, there's nothing in them right now just some extra canning jars that I bought at the end of the season, some disposable white plastic forks and spoons that I use and then this container here is really what I consider our emergency. container has lighters has flashlights has a water pump has just all the basic things that I started when we started compiling things to put in there has extra matches has some can lids just a variety of things that I know if I need them in case of emergency, there It's where they are.

It's a great way to start. If you don't have much space, you can just set up a container and start throwing things away. That's where I started. I only bought one or two things at a time. I was at Walmart once and I added them there, so that's our emergency container and then when you go down, you'll see some of our pasta here. These are stacked spaghetti. I have a lot more pasta up in our pantry. I have a little. some Hormel chili, we don't normally eat it that simple, but we use it for some sauces and different things, then I have two shelves of sliced ​​peaches, my kids, if they're going to have fruit, it's applesauce or sliced ​​peaches from a can and then We actually make a lot of frozen fruit and they eat it frozen as is or whatever fruit is in season so I don't have a lot of other canned fruit because this is what we eat.

I really try not to stock things that our family doesn't eat because I don't want it to go to waste, so that's what I have for fruit and you can choose that for your family the next shelf here is tomato sauce and tomato paste. You can see what these shelves really are. If I can show you without the shadow, they are really very deep. I think I have about 40 cans of tomato paste in there and almost the same amount of tomato sauce. They will last a long time. I use those two things. I use tomato sauce and tomato paste. to make my homemade spaghetti sauce and then I also use tomato paste when I'm canning sauce so I have a lot of that in there and then this is still squash that I had

stockpile

d last year and I'll keep an eye out for sales to restock.

It's still over a year away from expiration, so I'm okay with making a lot of pumpkin bread in our family, which is one of my kids' favorite breakfasts, so I give it away a lot as gifts to teachers or different things. , so I always have canned pumpkin in our stash here and then when you come down, the bottom shelf is where I keep our extra paper items, so I have some paper plates from the lunch place or the large lunch size for dinner and on the back of those. The big ones are really small, you can see.

I have a big cast iron pot back there and then this is my water bath canner and my pressure cooker and grandma's one that I'm still using there, it works fine since the 60's with its new modern guide. for canning I use it, I just replaced the seal again this year and then just some extra glasses that we have for parties here, so these are these shelves again. I'll show you by going up and then I'm going to crouch down. the water heater and I'll show you the other side, we'll start at the top and this is some long term food storage that I have, this is something that I don't have a lot of, but I'm slowly

building

up when I can. find a very good offer.

Freeze-dried foods are foods that have had all the water removed and they're already packaged for you and they're in these number 10 cans they're called and they last about 30 years, so this is the food that we don't touch, we're not using it, it's actually up there in case of an emergency, so I have some of that up there and then if you move down, I have some canned chicken. I bought this amazingly with those 200, this was my other big one. I bought a lot of canned chicken to have some canned protein at home, and I bought this before the prices went crazy and since then I have almost doubled the canned chicken.

If you're going to eat canned protein, make sure it's something your family will eat. I was very skeptical about canned meat and would eventually like to add some more to our stash. I have a lot in our freezer, so that's where most of our meat is. Our extra freezer is basically full of meat that I buy whenever there's a sale. and I store it there, you can see it when I show you my pantry also to look inside the freezer, but if you're going to buy canned protein or canned chicken, this canned chicken from Sam's Club is actually very good, I was pleasantly surprised, it's all white meat , it's in large chunks and actual chicken pieces, and it's just canned in water and, again, it has a long shelf life, it lasts three to four years, so it's very handy to have in your stash.

I'll use some in sauces and then as it gets closer, I'll start using it in some of our recipes, like poppy seed chicken or a few different things. Our family loves black olives. The kids like them, so we eat a lot of them and I discovered. this recently, if you look, canned olives have an incredibly long shelf life, they were purchased in 21 and look, it's a five year shelf light, it doesn't expire until the 26th. So it's surprising to find something with such a long shelf life. and again, that's just a Best Buy date, so even then it could probably last a little longer, so if you like black olives, be sure to stock up on them.

I found that Sam's has the best price so I buy the six packs and it's about 1.75 a can. That's where I buy our black olives and then I have some instant milk. I use it mainly for baking and have it as a backup if I need it, but it's mainly for baking bread and a few different things I have in there. some extra wine down here, the Aldi Riesling is delicious if you've never tried it, lots of other cheap wines from Aldi too, and then we go to my canned soups and this is a section where I have the most things and this is definitely a year of my cream of chicken soup, probably about six months of cream of tomato soup.

I use that main one, we don't really eat it, it's mainly for one or two recipes that we use, so that's what it's for, but this one on the shelf is pretty much all cream of chicken soup, we don't eat cream of mushroom soup and then there's a couple of pasta noodles. canned chicken for when the kids are sick that we have, there are some smaller diced ones, these are the bigger cans of tomatoes, a row of salsa in there, some canned salsa that was really good, a little bit of honey, we didn't use this regularly, we use it very sporadically, but I know it lasts a long time, so again when I saw prices starting to go up I stored some honey in large jars.

Same with maple syrup. I have one my kids prefer the cheap imitation syrup they don't really like the strong taste of really good maple syrup but we have one on our shelves and then going down we have some more cream of chicken soup that was part from my reserve gift, there are 30 cans of Campbell's and then here you will see a lot more applesauce, almost all Aldi, the yellow cans are Motts from Sam's, which like I said, they are up to 290 now. I think 299 at Aldi and Walmart, but if you break it down, it's about 250 or 260 per jar at Sam's, so definitely the best price there and here you'll see more canned vegetables and these are each one of these cardboard trays.

It's got 12 and then they're stacked two in the back, so if you see we've got corn and some green beans, a lot of corn on this side, let's go around and see what's really on this other side, it looks like I've got a little bit more, yeah. these are some more tomato products from the smaller cans, so these are some diced ones, these are some seasoned ones with garlic and basil that I can use in Italian style pasta and then some diced ones, the ones I know too. 36 cans were part of my stash. gift, okay, so if I move you back we'll go back a little bit, let me show you what else I have on the bottom shelf, the bottom shelf is here, we have all my plastic clothes and it has disposable napkins and plates that I do have. a huge stack of really cheap disposable plates in my emergency also leans over there and then I have a container that's full of cookie cutters and different baking things that are actually pretty much all cookie cutters and sort of different things and then under our stairs, which Again we don't have light down there so you can't really see.

I just got a pair out, it's where I keep all my cubes. Now this is where you'll find things like I have. Well, let's go over this. I have a three gallon bucket, it's a food safe bucket, unfortunately it's not Kilwin ice cream, but in this one it's popcorn. I have a couple containers and most are sealed in plastic bags. I have some mylar. Not really. I went on mylar because we're using pretty much everything we have, but we had purchased a 50-pound bag of popcorn, which is about a year's supply of wheat popcorn at least once a week for Sunday dinner. at night.

A lot of times my kids love popcorn so I think I have three of these, once I filled them back up they are food grade buckets so I feel great having them and then I bought several five gallon buckets before I start buying them and that's where I keep all my extra sugar and flour. and baked goods, I just haven't written on the buckets because I want to be able to reuse them and I like them to look clean, but I have them all labeled on the top with painter's tape and then on the side so I can see them easily.

This is a sugar cube and I'll move on. I have most of them in the regular lids here because they seal nice and tight, so each one of these that I have can be seen seven times four, so 28, I guess I'll always keep around I figure there's 25 pounds of sugar in one of these, so I have 28 of the small bags or if I make some of the larger bags, I tend to have 20 in them. My goal is to have about three of these sugar bags, it would probably be three to four of those sugar ones the sugar doesn't go bad even if it gets harder it really lasts a long time and you can just divide it up and it will still be good, so everything is sealed.

I have several of those. I have a container of these. of brown sugar, we check it with a little bit of powdered sugar, but it's basically brown sugar and sugar that I store and I swirl it around and then I crunch the numbers and fill these buckets. I bake bread for us. family, so I have a very simple recipe for that and I found that if I bake bread every week and if I need to bake bread for us to eat every week using my recipe and making other baked goods, we would use about 25 pounds. of flour a month so I just multiplied that by knowing again baking bread baking muffins baking cookies baking other things and I started stocking and filling containers, one of these containers I have if you're going to hold about 25 pounds of flour if you do it in a small container into small bags, you can easily fit five of them here or you can make a large 25 pound bag.

I've done that with sugar before, when I bought a big bag and it fits in here just fine. Well, I've used a couple of screw caps. Actually, I don't prefer them, they are very comfortable to enter, but it is almost impossiblefor me or my husband to place them, we have three and they will never come. They come off again, um, so we stuck with the cheaper lids, they seal very, very well and you have to pull them, but they're easy to remove. We had bought all of our buckets at Menards with the lids on, so this is what it really is. my reservation, like I said, you can see those shelves here and around the corner and that's what I have down here, let me turn you around and we'll talk a little bit more before we finish this, well, there you go, that's the beak.

Within my reservation, did you answer all of his questions or do you have more for me? If you have them, leave them in the comments below and ask questions. I will be happy to answer anything you have or if there is anything you missed and If you want to know more, let me know too and I will answer you the best I can. Here are a couple more things I just realized that I forgot to mention in those buckets you saw down there, especially the five-gallon buckets you saw. that painter's tape and they had a number, that number is actually how I keep track of what my most current bucket is and then I just number them, so if I have three sugar things, it will say sugar one, sugar two , sugar three and then I'm using from the beginning and I fill them and I put them in the back as I fill it and I turn it for the sugar and the flour and that kind of stuff in brown sugar.

I put them in the original packages again. I told them no. I don't really make mylar, these are things that we use and rotate constantly, so I'm not trying to store things for 30 years, other than long term things that I bought and that are already set up for me, so I just leave them. in regular packets, place them in the buckets, number them and cycle them, then water. I've mentioned before how important water is and remember that you're supposed to have a minimum three-day supply for your family one gallon per person per day, but the ideal goal is two weeks, so our water is stored practically in the individual water bottles that come in the 40 pack from Sam's which equals five gallons so I've chosen Do It That Way because I can stock them up and they also store under the steps with our buckets and that's where I turn them easily.

We have some of that water in the canning jars, like I showed you. a couple of five gallon buckets, so variety and then I make all those apple juice containers, I rinse them and clean them, fill them with water and put them under our sinks and every sink and every bathroom has at least two gallons , which would be four containers of water again to use if we lose power and to flush the toilets, it happened earlier this year and I was so grateful to have stored it, so make water a priority and make sure you store it Also, like I said.

This is it, this is a real reserve built very frugally. I have done all this on my budget. You guys like it, I said, you can do this. It has taken me time, but I have been very intentional, slow and steady. I win the race, just make those lists count. Find out what they're doing and start adding those things to your weekly shopping trip instead of buying one thing that's on sale. You know, buy three or four and add them to your stash. You'll be surprised how quickly it adds up. Consider only purchasing five. items per week or spend the five dollars per week.

I have videos about that. I have a free checklist for you. I really think that having a reserve is very important for everyone, not only is it a practical emergency fund for you, but it will also save you a lot of money. And when I run out of anything, I just run to the basement and grab what I need. It's like having my own

grocery

store in the basement and I love it. I love having this convenience if I need to prepare a meal. For friends I have things here on hand I don't have to go to the store for a special trip Same thing if we're spontaneously entertaining I have what I need A reservation is very useful in many different ways, okay.

I know this was a lot and I hope it was helpful again. If you have questions, leave them in the comments. I would love to chat more with you. I'll leave links to all the other videos I mentioned, as well as some links. to the bins and the shelves and those different things that I use down here so you can see all those things if you like this video make sure to give me a thumbs up and subscribe and join me for more videos on storage and if you want to see how am I adding to my budget.

I share a Frugal

grocery

haul every Thursday, so join me and I'll show you what I'm purchasing for us to use that week and to add to and replenish our stock. Thanks for join me and see you in the next video.