Do you have a storecupboard / larder / backup food?

[TheKitchenWitch]

I don't mean if you are a Prepper necessarily, just do you have deliberate extra food stored at home? And if so, what things do you have?

I set up a larder in the cellar during Covid (partly because of shortages it was good to have some backups, and partly as I had the time to do it!), and I've found it really useful since. I basically have all the regular essentials which then get replaced immediately as they get used up. I also add to it when things are on offer.

I have:
tins & jars - beans/pulses, tomatoes, veg (inc. potatoes), sauerkraut, pickles, fish, fruit
long-life milk, soy, coconut
jams, spreads, honey
teabags and coffee beans
dry baking ingredients - flour, sugar, cocoa, yeast, salt
oil, vinegar, condiments
rice, dried beans / pulses / grains
pasta and noodles
part-baked bread and rolls
savoury snacks - crisps, nuts, crackers etc
sweets snacks - biscuits, chocolates, sweets
pet food

I also have a toiletries section (def. learnt that lesson from covid!)

We buy drinks by the crate (not in UK, it's more usual to do here) so always have a lot of water/lemonade etc in.

It gives me a weird sense of pleasure to see it 😁 and obviously a certain amount of security - we can manage for a good while without needing to go shopping if necessary.

Just interested in who else does this and what sort of things you have?

I always like to have a month's worth of food in. Thats to take advantage of bargains, bulk food purchases and just in case supplies. I grew up in a developing country and have spent years in others so it makes sense, as I've known shortages...

I'm really not sure why people think preppers were the ones panic buying. I saw the panic buyers in HK when Covid hit there first and went out and bought my toilet rolls, flour etc then. When everyone was fighting over stuff in the UK, I had no need to. Preppers prepare, not panic.

I am sure lots of people did panic buy because of covid but I agree that it was unlikely to be people who have a good store of items.

As I said, when we went into lockdown, we didn't didn't to go to a shop for weeks. I was happy about this as I did not want to go out because I was so scared of catching covid and I didn't want DH going to shops because he has other health conditions.

One of our neighbours run out of loo rolls and could not get any as all the shops he tried had none (a couple of them told him it was because of panic buyers - one person bought 6 packs of 24 rolls!). He was very grateful when we gave him some of ours.

Me and DH are vegetarian and we eat a lot of indian food. We buy all our lentils, chickpeas, different beans, spices and bags of onions from international supermarkets. There is one not that far from us but we do tend to use a bigger one which is about 40 miles away. We go every 6 months or so and stock up

I was often hungry as a child and would have a right old covet of friend's houses with big pantries. I couldn't understand why they didn't go and eat handfuls of crunchy nut cornflakes straight from the box!

Now I have a walk-in pantry with beautiful floor-to-ceiling shelves that DH made. It brings me so much joy to know I can cook a feast for family and friends if they turn up unexpectedly. It has also saved a fortune being able to buy up our staples when I see them half price. I realise that it is a very fortunate position to be in.

I can't believe there are still people who can't see the difference between having a storecupboard and panic buying

Having a few things in meant that we were able to just about totally avoid the shops for a good few weeks during the worst of the queues and shortages. We just got fresh stuff from the Co-op and the market and used up what we had in for everything else. We'd bought a big pack of Costco toilet rolls probably a few weeks earlier when no-one had barely heard of COVID, so didn't even need to think about buying more until about May so it wasn't people like us causing the shortages.

Until COVID, I didn't realise there were actually people who'd buy a 4 pack of toilet rolls just about every week so they were screwed when you couldn't get them. And it wasn't due to lack of space or money that they didn't buy the bigger packs, they just assumed they'd always be able to get them any time they went to the shop.

@BarbaraofSeville I can't get my head round people that buy a pack of 2 or 4 loo rolls. It works out dearer and they must be forever buying them. Even in a 2 person household a 4 pack would probably only last 2 weeks max.

If I didn't have a stock of anything else, I would always have a stock of loo roll. Even the smallest house/flat must have somewhere to store them - under the bed, on top of a wardrobe. My sister buys them from Costco and keeps so many out and stores the rest in the loft

I've always kept a stock of items in. It's always made the most sense financially, because of all the multibuy offers/cheaper multipacks. Sometimes I'd travel out to cheaper shops and stock up on items - places that are an hour+ to travel to so I only want to do that a few times a year. I think the only time I didn't was when I was in a shared student flat or other house share, so I was low on storage space. But I've had my own place since I was 19 so had space since then, even in a small flat. I've always lived within walking distance of a supermarket but you don't always want to go out for ingredients, especially if you have a young child who would have to come.