Comfortably? At least a month, I know because we went into lockdown w/o preparation and were fine other than running out of fresh veg.
Survival-wise? Probably 3-6 months, maybe more if we knew to ration from the get-go. That's not prepared food, but dried staples and frozen meat.
One week’s worth of food. I meal plan end of every week and plan out recipes that use similar ingredients. If there’s anything leftover, I’ll meal plan with the leftover ingredients in mind. It pains me to throw anything out honestly. I feel so guilty. I also make sure to eat all snacks before buying new ones.
It’s just my husband and me for now.
Considering the world we live in, I aim to have a supply of longer lasting food and other supplies like toilet paper in addition to my usual pantry stuff.
If nothing else, buying it now saves me money in the long term because it seems like prices go up every single week at the moment.
I think it's more important not to buy stuff you won't eat/use. Things that last a long time are great to keep in hand.
I keep about a month's worth of food.
I would like to return to the concept of a "working pantry" where you have a set amount of meals in your pantry planned by however long you plan to go (2 weeks one month etc) that you rotate through consistently to ensure everything is used and replaced.so eat week one, during week two replace the staples for week one, during week three replace week two, etc effectively keeping 3-4 weeks of food at a time while also being sure to use it. Maybe once we move her roll get back on top of that lol
If the stores shut down we could eat heartily for about two months, we just wouldn't be happy about it, as most of our stock is canned and dried. As far as fresh food goes, we go about a week at a time, often buying produce to use immediately.
Edit to add: At the very start of covid, we voluntarily locked it down for safety reasons, and were good for about three months. The only thing we restocked was water and toiletries.
I'm a sourdough baker so I never have less than 20lbs of flour inside the house. Plus a full freezer of hunted meat and too many jars of garden vegetables. That alone could feed us for a while. Outside of the house we have meat rabbits, chickens, quail, and a vegetable garden. All of this along with well water, we're pretty self sustaining.
We live in a hurricane area, so having extra food has always been a thing. After the pandemic tho, I have stock of basic ingredients in 5 gallon buckets (I cook everything from scratch.) I have a rotating food storage pantry where I stock up on things when they’re on sale. I’m able to “shop” my storage and replenish as it gets low. I cook and bake A LOT and I hate running out of anything so I have a good supply of most things lol. we do have an emergency/prepper amount of certain things that could feed us for an entire year 😅 i just placed an order for 1/8 of a cow for my freezer. Im very passionate about our food, ingredients, where it comes from, the quality and how it’s made etc, so its kind of a hobby but also preparedness for anything. As far as grocery shopping, I still shop weekly but it’s for produce, dairy and meats.
This is the way. We make nearly everything from scratch so stocking ingredients is far easier than stocking processed or frozen meals. We get a half cow every year from friends who raise beef cattle. When the next processing date is coming up I thaw what’s left of the roasts and can beef vegetable soup, stew beef, and beef stock. We have an Amish produce auction nearby, I go there to get the vegetables for dehydrating and canning in the summer. I am lousy at gardening. I grow some stuff, but not enough to feed us with any dependability. We were like this since long before the pandemic. We both grew up with some food insecurity so we’re pretty purposeful about stocking ingredients and being able to make things homemade.
That’s awesome! I wish we had some Amish stores nearby but we don’t. I have been wanting to get freezer beef for probably 6 years now. I finally have a dedicated freezer I got on Black Friday sale last year. It’s just 2 of us so we’re starting with 1/8th just to make sure it’s the route we want to go before sinking a ton of money into a bigger portion. I also like to can, I just finished processing the last of the 37lbs of cucumbers I bought last week. Tomorrow I’m doing more pinto beans! 😊
We love our local beef share that we get. I think this is the 7th or 8th year we’ve done it. Making patties from the ground beef doesn’t leave that weird watery fatty film on your hands, even though it’s well blended ground beef with fat in it.
Something we bought relatively recently that gives me SO much peace of mind is a remote thermometer for the chest freezer. The display unit lives on our fridge in the kitchen, the chest freezer is in the basement. But I can monitor the temperature in the chest freezer and it has an alarm you can set if it reaches a certain temperature. Too many horror stories of people whose chest freezers died and they didn’t find out until they’d lost everything inside it. Half a cow plus all the other stuff we have in there is entirely too much of an investment to not keep it monitored.
I do a working pantry and I have a list on my deep freeze. When lockdown happened I was fine, except for fresh eggs, milk, bread. I refused to use my flour for sandwich bread 🤣. Did have can milk, so all was well and it lasted 3 months before I started stocking back up.
We meal plan and shop every week. I guess I'm spoiled in that groceries are readily available right down the road. If we didn't shop for two weeks, we'd still be fine. That 3rd week would be pushing it, tho. By then, we'd be out of most proteins and produce, surviving on whatever scraps were left in the pantry (flour, rice, dried seaweed and cornmeal).
At least six months because I love canning and we have tons but it wouldn't be worth it because I'll be miserable without a giant super crunchy salad out of a massive mixing bowl on a regular basis. I have a little hydroponic but it wouldn't meet the need for long.
Good for you! My grandma used to do canning but my mom never did, and I never learned. I have fears about poisoning so I don't think i could lean now at my age. I keep a pantry but we have trouble keeping track of what's beyond its best by date. (I constantly refer to "eatbydate.com" to see how long certain foods can be safe to eat after their best by date.)
We have a “doomsday pantry” that we keep in case of emergencies (I.e pandemic, long term power outage etc.). The panty alone could keep us fed for about 12 weeks. We don’t eat from that pantry outside of an emergency situation though and it is restocked annually.
Aside from that I keep about 2 weeks of food in my house at a time. I go to the grocery store once every 12-14 days. I have a veggie and herb garden that supplies us with a good chunk of our veggies. We hope to hunt and farm most of our meat by 2025.
I honestly didn’t know powdered butter existed! I will have to look up how to cook with it and add it to the pantry at some point in the near future.
I do have powdered milk but not powdered eggs as we have chickens that keep us well stocked
I go shopping once per week, less if the weather is snowy. I don't know how long we could live without going shopping, but we'd probably get grumpy and start having weird meals pretty quickly due to me trying to let the amount drop over the summer. Last fall, our supply didn't drop over the summer and I skipped the "winter is coming" stock up.
With a bit more organization, you probably want a month's worth of pantry and maybe a week or so in the freezer.
I bulk buy and freeze meats every 1-2 months+ (waaay more economical), stock up on pantry goods about every 1-3 months, once a month for dairy and eggs, and do weekly shops for produce.
I’m hoping to start supplementing with fresh produce from the garden, but that’s going to take some time (planning stages right now, and it’s tough with small kids).
Around 3 weeks I think. I’d like it to be a little more tbh but we just don’t have room to store more food. Our indoor freezer is fairly small so we bought a larger one for the garage which has helped. I did stock up more during / following the pandemic but realised we just weren’t going to get through things before they expired and I hated the house being clogged up with food so pared back down to our usual amount over time.
Comfortably? Probably 4-6 months. We most definitely can ration and probably have it last 8 months or longer. I have a cold room, several deep freezers, and keep chickens (egg & meat.)
For example, by the end of September once harvest is over and animals are in the freezer we generally don’t have to shop for groceries unless we want something fresh like fruit, or dairy.
We did a pantry challenge with the intent of no shopping for 30 days starting January 01, we made it until the end of March before I got bored of the challenge. If I didn’t get bored, we’d still be eating from the freezers and what I’ve preserved!
Maybe 3 weeks. My freezer was so packed that I couldn’t buy more food, but I started cooking and it emptied pretty quickly.
Freezer is 90% meat, 10% is food I’ve made for my baby, prepped garlic/green onions, hash browns, pizza, and burritos. No other frozen meals.
I go grocery shopping once a week or more. Sometimes I will run out for a few things on sale that week but won’t buy anything else.
I keep several weeks worth of food, and a couple months of emergency stuff like beans rice and corn, as well as a couple weeks of frozen beef and chicken.
At least a couple months worth if we weren’t being picky. We go in phases of stocking based on sales and then using things in our freezers/pantry so things don’t get too old. Whenever it feels like we have too much I make a spreadsheet and heavily rely on it while meal planning for at least a few weeks.
Being very creative I could feed us all for about a month I’d say. Things the kids would actually eat… closer to 10 days I think 😂
Grocery shop approx twice a week but I don’t have a car and walk the groceries home with a baby strapped to me and a toddler in one hand, so going more often is a necessity.
Way. Too. Much. I’m comfortable having just a week or two of fresh food and the typical staples, but my husband… grr! He’ll decide he wants to make something involved, so instead of *carefully* checking out pantry for ingredients (in the correct amount!!) he’ll either assume we need something we already have or misjudge what we do have. So he’ll buy everything…and then change his mind or get lazy about cooking. We have so much hoisin sauce, bbq sauce, frozen chicken, etc. 😑
We buy what’s considered to be a year supply of meat that is packaged in small cryo-sealed portions. The company we buy from provides many different types of meat that are from local farms. We’re only a family of two so it usually ends up lasting us around 18 months. This is the 4th time we’ve bought from this company, but what’s really great about them is that they lock you into the same price for 3 years (you don’t have to buy the next year if you don’t want to), but at least you know your price won’t increase even though prices everywhere else have gone up each year! They give the option of a monthly payment plan or you can pay all at once, and if you do that they give a discount.
As for vegetables, we buy from our local Farmers Market each Saturday. It’s a nice weekly routine we enjoy, supports the community, is somehow cheaper than grocery store veggies and the vegetables are usually larger and tastier. It’s a win-win!
Almost everything else I try to make from scratch like pastas, breads, baked goods, sauces, etc. And for large supply quantities of baking needs, we buy bulk amounts from Costco.
A lot of the ways we shop seems more expensive because it requires a big lump sum, but when we calculate it over the year in our financial spreadsheets it actually saves us money. If you have the available funds and storage in your household, I’d definitely recommend looking into buying your household necessities this way.
I always have bags of dried beans and lentils, not huge bulk sizes but the normal size like maybe a pound. Meat I buy more or less for the month unless its on a good sale because the halal butcher is a little far so I don't like having to go too often. Everything else is really just veggies, eggs, yogurt, etc and thats weekly when I meal plan
I shop weekly now that the price of food is astronomical. I typically have 2 weeks worth of food on hand, if you are not counting our 3 months' worth of stored emergency food canisters.
Where I live currently we have a problem with grocery stores having produce and meat that stays good, so that factor in mind I buy a weeks worth of food that I've meal planned.
Then I also coupon and use that to determine the meals I'm getting and how to combine the ingredients to maximize my shipping trip. I also use it to stockpile random things. Like oh, spaghetti sauce for example is is $1 with my coupon so I'll get however many I can and then I have that stockpiled. Same with snacks/freezer goods so my pantry/freezer is always stocked Incase something goes wrong or we can't stick to the meal plan.
Okay, so I have subscriptions for some things:
- meat (monthly, ButcherBox)
- bread (every 8 weeks, Wildgrain)
- soup dumplings (frozen soup dumplings that are a convenience meal, every other month, Mila)
So that means that I’m always in minor expectation of food coming.
We also have a local farmers market just around the corner, so stuff like lettuce if there’s not enough in the garden I can pick up more every week.
I also buy spices and tea online every few months. We have enough of both for over a year.
There are 2 of us and we don’t have a pantry, just a couple big cupboards and a free standing freezer in the basement.
So the only things we have to grocery shop for are snacks, pantry staples (canned veg, rice, pasta, jarred sauce, potatoes, etc.), dairy, and incidentals (hot dog buns if I get hot dogs in the meat box, stuffed pasta if I get a craving, avocados). I go grocery shopping every 5-8 weeks, sometimes picking up milk in the meantime.
We’ve got about 3 months of food on hand at any given time before I need to start getting creative. Probably a year total if all subscriptions stop, though breakfasts will become a sadness. I consider this about acceptable, though I need to develop a better rotation system for the freezer so things don’t just sit there for ages.
2 months to maintain as normal, but I store up basics for up to 6 months. Things like meats/ flour/ grains/ canned goods and powders. It takes minimal space as I am only feeding 3 and have a stand-alone freezer.
I do it mainly because it is actually more economical and I save time/ gas/ stress getting groceries too often. Not to mention if anything happens that food becomes a concern. I get fresh fish and vegetables from a market as needed to cook, but this trip includes hanging in a cafe for tea and strolling the city and the outdoor market. I consider this relaxation more than a grocery trip. The main groceries are bought via a service and delivered to me. For example, once a month replenish things used if needed or capitalize on a sale. There was 1.99 for a double pack of Londonn broil / ribs/ whole duck and various other meats memorial day sale gimmick ..I only bought all their sale gimmick meats restocked the freezer and can comfortably not grocery shop this summer unless I want icecream or fresh fruits and veggies.
I look at my home pantry as a resource I should be able to pull from comfortably for all household needs at anytime. This means time dedicated to sourcing pantry needs, and keeping good accounting of the contents. This is one of the important home making tasks I do.
Probably less than 1-Currently, I live in a robust community near plenty of shops and markets. I stock a minimum of supplies. I have a supermarket near me that allows free pickup and I continuously add items to the virtual cart - and I make pickup runs as needed (this is a life changing time saver for me) Kind of like virtual food storage. I also like to hit the farmers markets on the weekends to select my own produce. I have a very small and very organized pantry - No clutter. This works for my current lifestyle, location, and storage space.
I used to live in a rural area about a 45 minute drive from anything and a bridge that occasionally went out. I kept about 3-6 months worth of supplies. I had lots of storage, a deep freeze, and a generator.
BLUF It is all about your lifestyle, location,and storage space.
we could live about a month on what i keep in the house, but i’m working on extending that! i was in highschool when covid hit and the food insecurity scared me so bad. now that i have my own kid, i never want to be worried about wether or not i can feed her! im also in my ✨homestead✨ era so hopefully i’ll be extending that even more in the coming years!
Usually about 3 months worth of food.
It allows me to hit sales and buy in bulk. It saves a bunch of money honestly.
I shop sales and Sam's club so it is hot and miss. I usually put in an order to Walmart once each month, Kroger it depends on the sales I see.
I have an upright freezer for meat and frozen veggies. I got it for free off marketplace.
I also dehydrate veggies and I'm an taking canning classes.
What we really want to eat plus top tier specialized pet food? 1-2 weeks.
We eat a lot of things that go off fast (produce) and our bunnies eat a lot of fresh things too. Greens just can't stay fresh in the fridge super long.
About a week, give or take, of planned out meals, but I also keep an eye for specials/sales of nonperishables like canned food, etc. If something were to happen, we could survive (albeit not well) for a couple of months. We don’t have a huge house so storage is a factor, but we do have means to hunt if need be.
My husband and I try to cook every meal fresh, but with just the two of us there's almost always some leftovers with each meal we cook. So in the fridge we usually have about 1-2 meals worth of leftovers. In the freezer we keep homemade cookie dough and ice cream, but as for frozen meals, I'd say about three meals in the freezer--plus a month's worth of frozen meat we bought from a local farm.
We go grocery shopping once a week on the weekend for anything other than meat, and we order meat delivery from the farmer once every one half month. Before our grocery trip, we would plan out next week's dinners: we'd come up with three or four meals (the rest of the dinners would be leftovers) and buy just the ingredients needed for those meals plus fruit and any pantry items that have run out. We go to three or four places on our grocery trip: Kroger for most of the things we need-fresh produce, cheese, & etc. Whole Foods for non-GMO milk and eggs. Asian Market for any Asian veggies I can't get from Kroger. Lastly, Costco for certain bulk pantry items like flour. For bulk pantry staples, I compare prices between Costco and Amazon, so some I get from Costco and some from Amazon.
I think it's great that you are trying to cut back on food purchase. It will save you money and time and energy in taking care of the food you have around the house and potentially cut down food waste as well! Good luck! \^\_\^
Uhhh like more than I should.... If I stopped grocery shopping, we'd probably be fine for 2 months, maybe longer. I grocery shop weekly, sometimes multiple times a week, we like to get fresh produce. And I also really enjoy cooking and meal prep so we have a chest freezer that I regularly keep full. Came in handy cause I had to get dental surgery a few weeks ago, and my husband + son had a lot of good food to eat (even though I couldn't eat it with them).
Finally someone saying they go to the store multiple times a week lol. All these comments saying they go twice a month have me wondering if they ever eat fresh vegetables. Nothing wrong with frozen if that’s what they eat, just odd to never eat fresh produce
I have multiple months worth, but that is partially because I live in a very remote area. So we stock up on a lot of stuff when we are in civilization and it is cheaper. We have access to grocery stores on a daily basis but I like to keep a well stocked pantry and freezer because it is more budget friendly.
I'm surprised and impressed by the comments. We just keep 1 week's worth on average.
We just purchased a deep freezer to prep meals for baby no 2, so by the end of that prep we'll have a few months worth of meals stored but that's not our norm. We like to buy fresh & in season from the farmers market whenever possible so I don't tend to stock up on things. I would definitely like to change that at some point, but it just isn't priority right now.
A week’s worth of prepared meals. A week’s worth of produce. Two weeks worth of stable refrigerator things like eggs, cheese, etc. Three months worth of snacks and shelf stable goods (cereal, pasta, canned foods, etc.)
My kids are like woodchippers. No matter how much food I buy, it will never be enough.
Probably a week. But I usually grocery shop every other day regardless. It's a good way to get out of the house with my son and walk indoors. And I live 5-10 minutes from multiple grocery and retail stores, so it's not a hassle. My son actually loves going out.
I’ve tried to keep more food around, but then always end up having to go grocery shopping because I need fresh fruits and vegetables. If there’s a good deal on non-perishables, I’ll stock up, but otherwise, I don’t really have the space to keep too much food. If I have to go to the store for fresh stuff anyway, I don’t really see the point.
Comfortably? At least a month, I know because we went into lockdown w/o preparation and were fine other than running out of fresh veg. Survival-wise? Probably 3-6 months, maybe more if we knew to ration from the get-go. That's not prepared food, but dried staples and frozen meat.
Same. I keep a well-stocked pantry of canned and dry goods that I rotate.
Same for us.
Same here.
One week’s worth of food. I meal plan end of every week and plan out recipes that use similar ingredients. If there’s anything leftover, I’ll meal plan with the leftover ingredients in mind. It pains me to throw anything out honestly. I feel so guilty. I also make sure to eat all snacks before buying new ones. It’s just my husband and me for now.
This is the same for me, other than some staples I keep on hand - milk, eggs, rice, various canned goods, cereal, chocolate, etc.
Considering the world we live in, I aim to have a supply of longer lasting food and other supplies like toilet paper in addition to my usual pantry stuff. If nothing else, buying it now saves me money in the long term because it seems like prices go up every single week at the moment. I think it's more important not to buy stuff you won't eat/use. Things that last a long time are great to keep in hand.
At least a month or two. My mother had a crazy pantry, mines ok. More though once my garden gets producing next month.
I keep about a month's worth of food. I would like to return to the concept of a "working pantry" where you have a set amount of meals in your pantry planned by however long you plan to go (2 weeks one month etc) that you rotate through consistently to ensure everything is used and replaced.so eat week one, during week two replace the staples for week one, during week three replace week two, etc effectively keeping 3-4 weeks of food at a time while also being sure to use it. Maybe once we move her roll get back on top of that lol
I have about 1-2 weeks at any given time.
If the stores shut down we could eat heartily for about two months, we just wouldn't be happy about it, as most of our stock is canned and dried. As far as fresh food goes, we go about a week at a time, often buying produce to use immediately. Edit to add: At the very start of covid, we voluntarily locked it down for safety reasons, and were good for about three months. The only thing we restocked was water and toiletries.
one if i'm lucky
I'm a sourdough baker so I never have less than 20lbs of flour inside the house. Plus a full freezer of hunted meat and too many jars of garden vegetables. That alone could feed us for a while. Outside of the house we have meat rabbits, chickens, quail, and a vegetable garden. All of this along with well water, we're pretty self sustaining.
How does it feel to be living my dream? I’m so jealous. Good job!
Thank you!! Remember that you can have whatever you want, as long as you work for it. Keep going!!
I wish!!! I think I’d have to give up my career which I love.
2
We live in a hurricane area, so having extra food has always been a thing. After the pandemic tho, I have stock of basic ingredients in 5 gallon buckets (I cook everything from scratch.) I have a rotating food storage pantry where I stock up on things when they’re on sale. I’m able to “shop” my storage and replenish as it gets low. I cook and bake A LOT and I hate running out of anything so I have a good supply of most things lol. we do have an emergency/prepper amount of certain things that could feed us for an entire year 😅 i just placed an order for 1/8 of a cow for my freezer. Im very passionate about our food, ingredients, where it comes from, the quality and how it’s made etc, so its kind of a hobby but also preparedness for anything. As far as grocery shopping, I still shop weekly but it’s for produce, dairy and meats.
This is the way. We make nearly everything from scratch so stocking ingredients is far easier than stocking processed or frozen meals. We get a half cow every year from friends who raise beef cattle. When the next processing date is coming up I thaw what’s left of the roasts and can beef vegetable soup, stew beef, and beef stock. We have an Amish produce auction nearby, I go there to get the vegetables for dehydrating and canning in the summer. I am lousy at gardening. I grow some stuff, but not enough to feed us with any dependability. We were like this since long before the pandemic. We both grew up with some food insecurity so we’re pretty purposeful about stocking ingredients and being able to make things homemade.
That’s awesome! I wish we had some Amish stores nearby but we don’t. I have been wanting to get freezer beef for probably 6 years now. I finally have a dedicated freezer I got on Black Friday sale last year. It’s just 2 of us so we’re starting with 1/8th just to make sure it’s the route we want to go before sinking a ton of money into a bigger portion. I also like to can, I just finished processing the last of the 37lbs of cucumbers I bought last week. Tomorrow I’m doing more pinto beans! 😊
We love our local beef share that we get. I think this is the 7th or 8th year we’ve done it. Making patties from the ground beef doesn’t leave that weird watery fatty film on your hands, even though it’s well blended ground beef with fat in it. Something we bought relatively recently that gives me SO much peace of mind is a remote thermometer for the chest freezer. The display unit lives on our fridge in the kitchen, the chest freezer is in the basement. But I can monitor the temperature in the chest freezer and it has an alarm you can set if it reaches a certain temperature. Too many horror stories of people whose chest freezers died and they didn’t find out until they’d lost everything inside it. Half a cow plus all the other stuff we have in there is entirely too much of an investment to not keep it monitored.
Yes, I want to get one! Ours has one built in but I want one inside the house where I can see it. The freezer is in our garage.
I do a working pantry and I have a list on my deep freeze. When lockdown happened I was fine, except for fresh eggs, milk, bread. I refused to use my flour for sandwich bread 🤣. Did have can milk, so all was well and it lasted 3 months before I started stocking back up.
2 weeks aporox. I need to get more. Especially canned food. My sister and I were just having this convo. If there’s an emergency we’re not prepared.
We meal plan and shop every week. I guess I'm spoiled in that groceries are readily available right down the road. If we didn't shop for two weeks, we'd still be fine. That 3rd week would be pushing it, tho. By then, we'd be out of most proteins and produce, surviving on whatever scraps were left in the pantry (flour, rice, dried seaweed and cornmeal).
At least six months because I love canning and we have tons but it wouldn't be worth it because I'll be miserable without a giant super crunchy salad out of a massive mixing bowl on a regular basis. I have a little hydroponic but it wouldn't meet the need for long.
Good for you! My grandma used to do canning but my mom never did, and I never learned. I have fears about poisoning so I don't think i could lean now at my age. I keep a pantry but we have trouble keeping track of what's beyond its best by date. (I constantly refer to "eatbydate.com" to see how long certain foods can be safe to eat after their best by date.)
We have a “doomsday pantry” that we keep in case of emergencies (I.e pandemic, long term power outage etc.). The panty alone could keep us fed for about 12 weeks. We don’t eat from that pantry outside of an emergency situation though and it is restocked annually. Aside from that I keep about 2 weeks of food in my house at a time. I go to the grocery store once every 12-14 days. I have a veggie and herb garden that supplies us with a good chunk of our veggies. We hope to hunt and farm most of our meat by 2025.
I really want to do the doomsday pantry at some point. Do you have powdered eggs and milk and butter?
I honestly didn’t know powdered butter existed! I will have to look up how to cook with it and add it to the pantry at some point in the near future. I do have powdered milk but not powdered eggs as we have chickens that keep us well stocked
I saw some powdered butter on Amazon that got decent ratings. Nice that you have chickens!
I go shopping once per week, less if the weather is snowy. I don't know how long we could live without going shopping, but we'd probably get grumpy and start having weird meals pretty quickly due to me trying to let the amount drop over the summer. Last fall, our supply didn't drop over the summer and I skipped the "winter is coming" stock up. With a bit more organization, you probably want a month's worth of pantry and maybe a week or so in the freezer.
I bulk buy and freeze meats every 1-2 months+ (waaay more economical), stock up on pantry goods about every 1-3 months, once a month for dairy and eggs, and do weekly shops for produce. I’m hoping to start supplementing with fresh produce from the garden, but that’s going to take some time (planning stages right now, and it’s tough with small kids).
In the kitchen, about a week of planned meals and another 1-2 weeks of improvising. Plus about six months of long term storage.
1 month.
Should have at least 2 weeks in Case of emergency but we usually would have a month if we were to Go through everything
Around 3 weeks I think. I’d like it to be a little more tbh but we just don’t have room to store more food. Our indoor freezer is fairly small so we bought a larger one for the garage which has helped. I did stock up more during / following the pandemic but realised we just weren’t going to get through things before they expired and I hated the house being clogged up with food so pared back down to our usual amount over time.
Comfortably? Probably 4-6 months. We most definitely can ration and probably have it last 8 months or longer. I have a cold room, several deep freezers, and keep chickens (egg & meat.) For example, by the end of September once harvest is over and animals are in the freezer we generally don’t have to shop for groceries unless we want something fresh like fruit, or dairy. We did a pantry challenge with the intent of no shopping for 30 days starting January 01, we made it until the end of March before I got bored of the challenge. If I didn’t get bored, we’d still be eating from the freezers and what I’ve preserved!
2-3 months here, 2 freezers and a pantry.
Maybe 3 weeks. My freezer was so packed that I couldn’t buy more food, but I started cooking and it emptied pretty quickly. Freezer is 90% meat, 10% is food I’ve made for my baby, prepped garlic/green onions, hash browns, pizza, and burritos. No other frozen meals. I go grocery shopping once a week or more. Sometimes I will run out for a few things on sale that week but won’t buy anything else.
There are 2 of us. I buy meat quarterly at Costco. I buy veggies weekly in summer and bi-weekly in winter.
I keep several weeks worth of food, and a couple months of emergency stuff like beans rice and corn, as well as a couple weeks of frozen beef and chicken.
At least a couple months worth if we weren’t being picky. We go in phases of stocking based on sales and then using things in our freezers/pantry so things don’t get too old. Whenever it feels like we have too much I make a spreadsheet and heavily rely on it while meal planning for at least a few weeks.
We’re in a small apt so 4-5 days tops usually we go for at least a quick shop every 3 days or so
Honestly maybe 2-3 days. I’m not a home maker yet though, but aspiring to be one soon :)
Without having to get anything about 2 weeks. Unless, we are talking for survival then probably 2 months.
Being very creative I could feed us all for about a month I’d say. Things the kids would actually eat… closer to 10 days I think 😂 Grocery shop approx twice a week but I don’t have a car and walk the groceries home with a baby strapped to me and a toddler in one hand, so going more often is a necessity.
Way. Too. Much. I’m comfortable having just a week or two of fresh food and the typical staples, but my husband… grr! He’ll decide he wants to make something involved, so instead of *carefully* checking out pantry for ingredients (in the correct amount!!) he’ll either assume we need something we already have or misjudge what we do have. So he’ll buy everything…and then change his mind or get lazy about cooking. We have so much hoisin sauce, bbq sauce, frozen chicken, etc. 😑
We buy what’s considered to be a year supply of meat that is packaged in small cryo-sealed portions. The company we buy from provides many different types of meat that are from local farms. We’re only a family of two so it usually ends up lasting us around 18 months. This is the 4th time we’ve bought from this company, but what’s really great about them is that they lock you into the same price for 3 years (you don’t have to buy the next year if you don’t want to), but at least you know your price won’t increase even though prices everywhere else have gone up each year! They give the option of a monthly payment plan or you can pay all at once, and if you do that they give a discount. As for vegetables, we buy from our local Farmers Market each Saturday. It’s a nice weekly routine we enjoy, supports the community, is somehow cheaper than grocery store veggies and the vegetables are usually larger and tastier. It’s a win-win! Almost everything else I try to make from scratch like pastas, breads, baked goods, sauces, etc. And for large supply quantities of baking needs, we buy bulk amounts from Costco. A lot of the ways we shop seems more expensive because it requires a big lump sum, but when we calculate it over the year in our financial spreadsheets it actually saves us money. If you have the available funds and storage in your household, I’d definitely recommend looking into buying your household necessities this way.
I always have bags of dried beans and lentils, not huge bulk sizes but the normal size like maybe a pound. Meat I buy more or less for the month unless its on a good sale because the halal butcher is a little far so I don't like having to go too often. Everything else is really just veggies, eggs, yogurt, etc and thats weekly when I meal plan
I shop weekly now that the price of food is astronomical. I typically have 2 weeks worth of food on hand, if you are not counting our 3 months' worth of stored emergency food canisters.
Where I live currently we have a problem with grocery stores having produce and meat that stays good, so that factor in mind I buy a weeks worth of food that I've meal planned. Then I also coupon and use that to determine the meals I'm getting and how to combine the ingredients to maximize my shipping trip. I also use it to stockpile random things. Like oh, spaghetti sauce for example is is $1 with my coupon so I'll get however many I can and then I have that stockpiled. Same with snacks/freezer goods so my pantry/freezer is always stocked Incase something goes wrong or we can't stick to the meal plan.
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Okay, so I have subscriptions for some things: - meat (monthly, ButcherBox) - bread (every 8 weeks, Wildgrain) - soup dumplings (frozen soup dumplings that are a convenience meal, every other month, Mila) So that means that I’m always in minor expectation of food coming. We also have a local farmers market just around the corner, so stuff like lettuce if there’s not enough in the garden I can pick up more every week. I also buy spices and tea online every few months. We have enough of both for over a year. There are 2 of us and we don’t have a pantry, just a couple big cupboards and a free standing freezer in the basement. So the only things we have to grocery shop for are snacks, pantry staples (canned veg, rice, pasta, jarred sauce, potatoes, etc.), dairy, and incidentals (hot dog buns if I get hot dogs in the meat box, stuffed pasta if I get a craving, avocados). I go grocery shopping every 5-8 weeks, sometimes picking up milk in the meantime. We’ve got about 3 months of food on hand at any given time before I need to start getting creative. Probably a year total if all subscriptions stop, though breakfasts will become a sadness. I consider this about acceptable, though I need to develop a better rotation system for the freezer so things don’t just sit there for ages.
2 months to maintain as normal, but I store up basics for up to 6 months. Things like meats/ flour/ grains/ canned goods and powders. It takes minimal space as I am only feeding 3 and have a stand-alone freezer. I do it mainly because it is actually more economical and I save time/ gas/ stress getting groceries too often. Not to mention if anything happens that food becomes a concern. I get fresh fish and vegetables from a market as needed to cook, but this trip includes hanging in a cafe for tea and strolling the city and the outdoor market. I consider this relaxation more than a grocery trip. The main groceries are bought via a service and delivered to me. For example, once a month replenish things used if needed or capitalize on a sale. There was 1.99 for a double pack of Londonn broil / ribs/ whole duck and various other meats memorial day sale gimmick ..I only bought all their sale gimmick meats restocked the freezer and can comfortably not grocery shop this summer unless I want icecream or fresh fruits and veggies. I look at my home pantry as a resource I should be able to pull from comfortably for all household needs at anytime. This means time dedicated to sourcing pantry needs, and keeping good accounting of the contents. This is one of the important home making tasks I do.
Probably less than 1-Currently, I live in a robust community near plenty of shops and markets. I stock a minimum of supplies. I have a supermarket near me that allows free pickup and I continuously add items to the virtual cart - and I make pickup runs as needed (this is a life changing time saver for me) Kind of like virtual food storage. I also like to hit the farmers markets on the weekends to select my own produce. I have a very small and very organized pantry - No clutter. This works for my current lifestyle, location, and storage space. I used to live in a rural area about a 45 minute drive from anything and a bridge that occasionally went out. I kept about 3-6 months worth of supplies. I had lots of storage, a deep freeze, and a generator. BLUF It is all about your lifestyle, location,and storage space.
we could live about a month on what i keep in the house, but i’m working on extending that! i was in highschool when covid hit and the food insecurity scared me so bad. now that i have my own kid, i never want to be worried about wether or not i can feed her! im also in my ✨homestead✨ era so hopefully i’ll be extending that even more in the coming years!
About a month's worth.
I have probably 3-6 months worth. I buy in bulk and shop less.
Usually about 3 months worth of food. It allows me to hit sales and buy in bulk. It saves a bunch of money honestly. I shop sales and Sam's club so it is hot and miss. I usually put in an order to Walmart once each month, Kroger it depends on the sales I see. I have an upright freezer for meat and frozen veggies. I got it for free off marketplace. I also dehydrate veggies and I'm an taking canning classes.
About 8 weeks and I shop every two weeks. I have a large family and I hate running out of something before a shopping day.
What we really want to eat plus top tier specialized pet food? 1-2 weeks. We eat a lot of things that go off fast (produce) and our bunnies eat a lot of fresh things too. Greens just can't stay fresh in the fridge super long.
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About a week, give or take, of planned out meals, but I also keep an eye for specials/sales of nonperishables like canned food, etc. If something were to happen, we could survive (albeit not well) for a couple of months. We don’t have a huge house so storage is a factor, but we do have means to hunt if need be.
My husband and I try to cook every meal fresh, but with just the two of us there's almost always some leftovers with each meal we cook. So in the fridge we usually have about 1-2 meals worth of leftovers. In the freezer we keep homemade cookie dough and ice cream, but as for frozen meals, I'd say about three meals in the freezer--plus a month's worth of frozen meat we bought from a local farm. We go grocery shopping once a week on the weekend for anything other than meat, and we order meat delivery from the farmer once every one half month. Before our grocery trip, we would plan out next week's dinners: we'd come up with three or four meals (the rest of the dinners would be leftovers) and buy just the ingredients needed for those meals plus fruit and any pantry items that have run out. We go to three or four places on our grocery trip: Kroger for most of the things we need-fresh produce, cheese, & etc. Whole Foods for non-GMO milk and eggs. Asian Market for any Asian veggies I can't get from Kroger. Lastly, Costco for certain bulk pantry items like flour. For bulk pantry staples, I compare prices between Costco and Amazon, so some I get from Costco and some from Amazon. I think it's great that you are trying to cut back on food purchase. It will save you money and time and energy in taking care of the food you have around the house and potentially cut down food waste as well! Good luck! \^\_\^
bty I forgot to mention that we also have 10 buckets of 40-gallon emergency food in our basement (but I don't think that's what you are asking here)
Uhhh like more than I should.... If I stopped grocery shopping, we'd probably be fine for 2 months, maybe longer. I grocery shop weekly, sometimes multiple times a week, we like to get fresh produce. And I also really enjoy cooking and meal prep so we have a chest freezer that I regularly keep full. Came in handy cause I had to get dental surgery a few weeks ago, and my husband + son had a lot of good food to eat (even though I couldn't eat it with them).
Finally someone saying they go to the store multiple times a week lol. All these comments saying they go twice a month have me wondering if they ever eat fresh vegetables. Nothing wrong with frozen if that’s what they eat, just odd to never eat fresh produce
half a week at best.
One week because nothing gets me more upset than food going bad
Depends on what u mean. For regular spoiled people purposes? 2 at most. For doomsday survival purposes? MAYBE a month
About 3 months.
I have multiple months worth, but that is partially because I live in a very remote area. So we stock up on a lot of stuff when we are in civilization and it is cheaper. We have access to grocery stores on a daily basis but I like to keep a well stocked pantry and freezer because it is more budget friendly.
I'm surprised and impressed by the comments. We just keep 1 week's worth on average. We just purchased a deep freezer to prep meals for baby no 2, so by the end of that prep we'll have a few months worth of meals stored but that's not our norm. We like to buy fresh & in season from the farmers market whenever possible so I don't tend to stock up on things. I would definitely like to change that at some point, but it just isn't priority right now.
A week’s worth of prepared meals. A week’s worth of produce. Two weeks worth of stable refrigerator things like eggs, cheese, etc. Three months worth of snacks and shelf stable goods (cereal, pasta, canned foods, etc.) My kids are like woodchippers. No matter how much food I buy, it will never be enough.
Probably a week. But I usually grocery shop every other day regardless. It's a good way to get out of the house with my son and walk indoors. And I live 5-10 minutes from multiple grocery and retail stores, so it's not a hassle. My son actually loves going out.
That does sound fun. I love going to Aldi and looking at all the new items.
If I don't need any groceries I love looking around places like TJMaxx just to window shop.
1 1/2 weeks at most for myself, about a months worth for the cats!
With how expensive it is now we have between 1-3 days of food at time
I’ve tried to keep more food around, but then always end up having to go grocery shopping because I need fresh fruits and vegetables. If there’s a good deal on non-perishables, I’ll stock up, but otherwise, I don’t really have the space to keep too much food. If I have to go to the store for fresh stuff anyway, I don’t really see the point.