Keeping It In Rotation

I've said before that emergency preparedness is an actual tenet of my religion. A major part of that is food storage, above and beyond what many preppers keep around. With this level storage, my options boil down to heavily preserved/freeze-dried food (which can only be called food in that it is a source of nutrition), or normal canned and dried foods that everybody gets at the grocery store.

The freeze dried stuff is awesome in regards to stability and shelf life (there is some of it on the market that I could buy today and still eat when I retire, and I'll be working for the next two-plus decades) but seeing as it tastes terrible and nobody wants to eat it, it's really not a great option for food storage.

Eating normal canned or dried foods is far more palatable, as well as being pleasantly familiar in a time of utter chaos and often far less expensive. Unfortunately, shelf life is far shorter (often a year or two instead of decades) so the simple solution is to just eat from my food storage and restock as I go.

The trouble with rotation is that it's a whole lot of work to keep the older product forward and the new stuff behind it, and can feel like four hands are needed. Thankfully there is an easier way for at least some of your supplies.

Large can organizer

Small can organizer

My grandmother had several of the small organizers in her kitchen, running pop cans and canned soup. You load new product in the top, and it feeds older product out the front. They work as well in a refrigerator as a pantry. The larger organizers work great for all your canned goods in a pantry.

My current method for bagged and boxed goods is to pull them forward as I consume them and load new product into the pantry behind them. I still haven't found a better way to rotate them, but I'm always looking. If anybody has a method or solution, please share it in the comments or the Facebook group, as I'd love to give it a try.

We can all get better at this by learning from each other.

Lokidude