Key Points:

Before you begin purchasing your long term food storage it is important to come up with a game plan for what you will store, how much of it to buy, and how you will use it

    Understanding Long Term Food Storage

  • Understand the basic recommended long-term foods and how they are used to help you determine what to store. Read our What Can You Do With YOUR Food Storage article for help.
  • Talk to experts in the food storage industry by going to preparedness store classes or to local church seminars.

    • Determining What to Purchase

  • Determine the quantities you will need by using our Long Term Food Storage Calculator (see tools section below)
  • Start small. Work on a full 3 month supply, then move onto a 6 month, then eventually a year supply
  • Follow our BabySteps Checklists to help spread out your purchases over time

    • Learning to Use Long Term Food Storage

  • Use food storage recipe books and websites to learn ways to use your long-term food storage on a regular basis (see resources section below).
  • Help your family become accustomed to eating your Long Term Food Storage. This will ease the transition in case of an emergency
  • Talk to your friends and family members about how they use their food storage. Check out our interview with Crystal to see the types of questions we ask.

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Step 4 Sponsors:

Helpful Tools:

Food Storage Calculator
Excel Spreadsheet
 Food Storage Calculator
Tutorial Video
The Food Storage Calculator is also available in printable pdf format

Tools From Our Sister Sites at FunWithFoodStorage.NET:

I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage Cookbook!
EveryDayFoodStorage.NET: Training Page on Cooking with your Food Storage
TheFoodStorageShopper.NET: Training Page on Buying Food Storage
TheFoodStorageShopper.NET: Budget Spreadsheet

Online Resources:

Food Storage Made Easy’s Recipe Page
Everyday Food Storage
Simply Living Smart

Food Storage Books
Food Storage Made Easy eBook
I Can’t Believe It’s Food Storage
Country Beans
Marlene’s Magic with Food Storage
Food Storage 101

  • DJ
    I am so excited that you will have more information on Long term food storage. Will you be covering Mylar bags, air obsorbers, buckets etc?
  • Stacy
    Thanks for posting this calculator! One question: What time frame does it cover? Six months? Or a year?
  • Jodi -- Food Storage Made Easy
    It's a one year calculator. We are working on revising it to be able to calculate for different time frames.
  • Juanette
    Yes I do have excel. However it still won't open it.
    Thanks
  • Leia
    I don't know if you got your problem resolved, but if not, you can download Open Office for free off the internet. Open Office has programs similar to Microsoft's Word, Power Point, Excel, & you can make PDFs too (& they can be saved in formats Microsoft recognizes). It's how I open my BabySteps documents! :}
  • Jodi -- Food Storage Made Easy
    Please send us an email at info@foodstoragemadeeasy.net and we can trouble-shoot for you or send you a copy of the excel. It doesn't seem like anyone else has trouble downloading it so there is probably something going on on your end that is blocking it from downloading.
  • Juanette
    When I try to download the food storage calculator and either open it or save it I get this message.
    foodstoragecalculator(1).xls:file format is not valid
    Can someone please help me with this?
  • Jodi -- Food Storage Made Easy
    Juanette, Do you have Excel on your computer? You will need that to open the files. Or you can download the program Open Office which will open word and excel documents. If not, you can always use the printable pdf versions of the calculators. They are not as handy but they still work! Hope that helps.
  • Michele T
    In reply to Meredith, I too have Celiac, and my family does not eat anything containing wheat that I cook in order to avoid cross-contamination. I have some food storage information from Against the Grain in SLC that tells you what to store instead of wheat. You can still use the spreadsheet here (I do!), just don't put anything in the columns for wheat.

    Thank you ladies for everything you have done here - I found your site about a week ago and I am now consumed with food storage! You make it so easy and I am so very grateful I found you!
  • Charlotte
    I haven't used the whole long term calculator, but I was trying to calculate how much honey I need and ran into a snag. It says that each adult needs 3 pounds, but when I put the number of adults in, it did not multiply that number by three for the total pounds I needed to purchase. Does that make sense? I don't know if that is a problem on any other item or not. Thanks for all of your hard work. It sure makes my job easier!
  • Leissa
    looking at your long tern calculator I am curious about why the milk amount is so high! other calculators i've used in the past say 14 lbs per person, yours says 60. that is a HUGE difference, just wondering if you can clarify for me:)
  • jweiss08
    Kate
    http://www.providentliving.org/pfw/multimedia/f...
    Download that pdf and there are lbs information for #10 cans. You should be able to divide the number of lbs required by the amount of lbs in a # 10 can to get how many # 10 cans you need. Just have to do the math backwards but it should work.
    Good luck!
  • I was trying to use your longterm food storage calculator and I ran into the same problem I always have. Everything is measured in increments I dont use to store in. Like flous is measured in lbs. I dont store by the lb I store in #10 cans. So how do I know how to convert it? We are always told how to store by the lb but we dont order by the lb we order by th can or by the box. Calculators never have it by what I am storing in. How do I convert it????
  • I LOVE this idea, thanks so much for your help.
    However, and I don't want to sound like sour grapes, since there are 7 other people in my family benefitting from this table.
    I have Celiac disease. 3 of my children may have it as well, but we are waiting on doctors tests for that.
    What this means is that I *cannot* have wheat, rye, barley or oats. That those foods even touching mine will make me ill. This also means that flours for me are fairly expensive, most of them spoil pretty easily without being in cold storage.
    So some of the things we store around here are pretty strange LOL. I still need to get a grain mill, but I'm trying out growing some of my own grains this year.
    I also love the fact that I can input '2' adults for wheat but '3' adults for rice, since our oldest daughter is basically an adult. So the basic premise of this is awesome and I'm so glad you are sharing it with us. I'm going to try to tweak it a bit, (probably in google documents) for Celiacs and I'll share it with you guys. Maybe others on special needs diets could share theirs as well?
  • Hi - I just found your site and LOVE the ease and simplicity. The baby step idea is genious...very fitting to reach moms that are feeling overwhelmed with the greatness of the task at hand to prepare for their familys every need.

    I would like to place you on my website as a recommended product/ link. Feel free to do the same if you like my web site and product- Non hybrid Heirloom seed sets- VERY affordable and all the work done in a one stop shop. 75 varieties for $50 or 30 for $30. I also sell culinary and medicinal herbs as well. Thanks Kelley
  • Angel
    I love the 'track my food storage' site.
    The key is to stay on top of it or it too becomes overwhelming. Ask me how I know lol

    The only comments I have had on the type of site is
    if they disappear so too does your records.

    Also there were some concerns about people being able to hack in and see what you got.
    Of course some folks are more concerned about that than others :o)
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