How To Build A Grocery Stockpile

Have you been thinking about starting a grocery stockpile to save money? It’s really not that hard to do – I promise! It does take time time, but in the end I think it is very much worth it. Here are some tips to help you get you started:

Get Organized
Before you start building your stockpile you need to determine some very important things:
- Where are you going to store everything?
- What types of items are you looking to stockpile?
- How long would you like your stockpile to last? 3 month supply? 6 months? 1 year?
- How many of each particular item do you need to stockpile for your family to last you the amount of time you want?

How Much Should I Stockpile For My Family?
It’s impotant to become familiar with what items your family uses on a daily basis. Many families go through lots of cereal, soup, pasta, tomato sauce, shampoo, toothpaste, bathroom tissue, etc. A good idea is when you open a new item, mark the date on the bottom (or for a roll of TP, mark the date on the inside of the brown tube) – when the item is gone, note the date and determine how long it took your family to go through it. Let’s say you mark a box of cereal on August 12th and on August 19th it is all gone. It took your family 1 week to go through that box of cereal. If you want to have a 3 month supply of that cereal, you will need to stockpile 12 boxes. Make sense?

Pay Attention To Expiration Dates
Be careful not to overbuy for your stockpile, or items could quickly become expired and thrown into the trash – which is not helping you to save money whatsoever! Always put new items BEHIND current ones to ensure you are always consuming the older items before the new ones. I would also suggest going through your stockpile every six months and noting the expiration dates on items you have not been using much. If there are more than enough for your family and you think you may not be able to use them all before they expire, consider donating them to your local food bank or shelter. It’s better that someone use them, instead of throwing them into the garbage because you couldn’t get to them in time!

Figure Out What You Can Spend
One of the biggest mistakes you can make when starting to build your stockpile is to buy too much too fast. It can become rather tempting to have a huge stockpile full of items right away, but it is extremely costly to try this approach. It takes time to build a stockpile. It took me well over a year to get my stockpile to a place where I felt comfortable.

You need to figure out how much money you can afford to spend on “stock up items” every week. How much do you spend on groceries every week right now? Let’s say it’s $200. Of that $200, try to use $20 to use only for stock up items. If you don’t use it (or all of it) one week, carry it over to the next week. When you see a great sale on something that your family uses alot of and you want to stock up on, buy as many as you can use before they expire and that you can afford. Try not to use the entire $20 per week on 1 item. If salad dressing is on sale for $1.99, regular $3.99 and toothpaste is on sale for .88 regular $1.79, try buying a bunch of both items. Don’t fall into the trap of over buying! Only buy enough that your family can consume before the expiry date.

There are so many benefits to stockpiling.
- You will never run out of the things you use (well, sometimes you will – but if you stock up long enough, it’s not often that you will run out of something).
- You don’t have to live paycheck to paycheck when it comes to your groceries. If you’re short on cash one week, come up with an EAT FROM THE PANTRY menu and only use items that you have at home, stockpiled in your pantry/freezer/fridge.
- You will be able to prepare meals on the fly. Even if you fail to plan a weekly menu, your pantry will be filled with so many meal options that you won’t have an excuse to not prepare a meal.
- You can help out others in need. Think of all the less fortunate people in the world and imagine how happy they would be to receive some items from your stockpile. It feels so good to give!

Where should you store your stockpile?
Even if you live in a small place, you can still have a stockpile! Check out my recent post on stockpile storage ideas to get some ideas on how you can store your items.

Having a stockpile is a great way to save money. By making sure you only buy what you can afford and store, and by paying attention to expiration dates – you can do it! Start a stockpile. Join the club.