this post was submitted on 22 Mar 2026
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It's easy to go overboard and make silly choices, but it's also easy to plan a good contingency. I keep 1 year of dried food and 3 months of canned / jarred / frozen food. Any more than that and it gets wasteful for me. I have backup grid-independent solar power, and I also keep a small veggie garden going most of the year.
I like to re-pack my dried foods into emptied, washed, and dried PET bottles, because they store better. I use 1L Waterford's bottles because their shape is perfect for maximizing storage and stack ability. I repack large bags of dried food into these with oxygen absorbers, and packed this way, rice, lentils, wheat berries, and barley will last 20 years. Rolled oats will last a couple years. Sugar and salt will last indefinitely. Scaling them down to 1L individual volumes means you can crack one without introducing contaminants to the others
Keeping a rigid system of labelling, inspecting and rotating your goods is as important as having them in the firstvplace
I'm still in the "mark expiration year in big marker" stage of rotating food, but that's been easy enough to keep up with.
Sadly, my condo doesn't allow vegetable gardens on our porch because of the real threat of visiting bears. I sneak in some herbs because they're not vegetables, but the HOA can be persnickety.