In March I had a panicked stash of food in boxes around the house. I was worried about brexit and DH suddenly losing his job at the end of last year had really brought home how quickly things can go from fine, to food bank. I have PND so am a little less rational than usual, and I was scared.
There has been some very sensible advice from preppers and as my head has cleared a little this year I have managed to come through the fear and paranoia and used 'prepping' as a tool to completely change my life.
It wasn't until a post in a group that I'm a member of, asking what would happen if you had to live off your 'stash' only, what food would you be eating, that I realised quite how much my situation has changed.
I stopped using boxes to store a stash, and instead I looked at all the things we use on a regular basis and realised that a lot of them actually have fairly long shelf life, even a lot of the fridge items have weeks if not months. So I set up my kitchen cupboards a bit like shop shelves, everything at least 3 packs/tins etc deep and instead of having weekly shops of everything I have split it into 10 categories, with 1 category as the focus of that week.
Now, we have 4 children, so we go through food an awful lot quicker than small families. But basically I have a tiny shop in my kitchen. When its time to open a new juice, the kids have a choice of flavours. When I'm making packed lunches and want crackers for example, I have 6 types. The main difference between my panicked stash and my pantry is variety. In my pasta/rice/grains cupboard I have cheap rice, basmati, jasmin, sushi, risotto, red, rice noodles. Pastas, spaghetti, cous cous, noodles, bulgar wheat. It has honestly made cooking and my life in general so much simpler. It may seem excessive, my mother definitely doesn't understand, but with four children a box of cereal can be gone in 2 days, a box of Ritz crackers does 1 days packed lunch. UHT milk has been a game changer, never running out of milk because you know there's some in the cupboard. And most importantly, we are again in a position where my DH will need to change jobs, which will leave us with no income potentially for 4 weeks (if he changes from weekly pay to monthly) but I have a small stock of everything from food to medicine to household supplies.
Not because of brexit, but this year I turned the edges around my garden (not particularly large) into a food forest/jungle and that has had an amazing impact on my mental health and I have grown so much food.
I just wanted to say thank you for the patient and practical advice that members of the community have been giving out, and the calm voices in the panic.