We introduced this surprise yesterday. If you missed it, make sure you go back and read it because it tells you all about it. As promised, here is Lesson Plan #2. We hope you enjoy! See you tomorrow for Lesson Plan #3.

PURPOSE: To help class members learn how to Plan, Buy, and Rotate Their 3 Month Supply.

If you’re following Grandma Lori’s Extreme Food Storage Makeover, you know that last time we left off with a “to be continued” after Julie TEASED you with pictures of the 3 month supply shop. Well now we are showing your the pantry – all organized and BEAUTIFUL! I love making labels… can you tell? Watch the video to see how Grandma Lori reacted when she saw it all put together!

NEXT UP: THE SCARY STUFF….LONG TERM FOOD STORAGE…

Are you storing a 3 month supply of food for a potential job loss? For a potential natural disaster? For meal planning purposes? Whatever it is that you are doing this for will influence how you go about planning, so first – decide – Why Am I Doing This? Check out our complete series on “Why Food Storage?”, if you haven’t figured this one out yet.

Are you the type that thinks your 3 month plan can only have shelf stable items? Do you think fridge and freezer foods count in your 3 month plan? Do you want to make a plan based on the assumption that you can still buy produce to fill in holes in your recipes? Once you have decided which types of foods you want in your 3 month plan, you’ll be able to filter your recipes to fit that criteria. ***disclaimer*** While it’s always good to have some shelf stable recipes, we think planning strictly shelf stable meals is a hard place to start for beginners-

• Some people find that buying foods they use often in bulk fit their goals for a 3 month plan.
• Some people like to plan their meals on our printable pdf forms with good old fashioned pens and pencils. (found on our BabyStep 3 page)
• If you’re really wanting to get detailed, you can use our 3 month supply excel spreadsheet and go to town including all ingredients for all your recipes and then watch it automatically calculate how many of each item you need.(found on our BabyStep 3 page)

While the end goal is to use foods daily from your pantry, and replace them with your regular grocery shopping, to get your supply kick started you may need to budget a certain amount of money to get your supply going. Figure out what you can spare until you have a supply built up and think of it as an investment.

When you have determined WHAT you need to buy, develop a plan to purchase. For some great info on this – visit our sister site The Food Storage Shopper. You may decide buying one extra each time works for you, or you might get into coupon and sale shopping and buy things only when on sale. Whatever fits your style, having a game plan in place will surely help.

Good luck, and remember there aren’t RIGHT answers to these questions. If we have learned anything in doing this for the last 2 years its that EVERYONE has a different style, and you need to figure out what works for you!

Up until now we have had this intense and “awesome” spreadsheet. However we’re excited to announce two new ways to plan your three month supply – a new and improved excel spreadsheet, and printable forms. The new excel spreadsheet is a lot more intuitive and easy to fill out with the same end results of the old one. We also created printable forms you can use to fill in with good old fashion pens and pencils for those of you who may not have access to excel.

The NEW Excel

To download the new excel form, click here. This form will automatically calculate the number of ingredients you need to purchase for three months. You can also use this spreadsheet to keep track of prices, and as an inventory tracker.

Here is a little tutorial on how to use the new excel (we STRONGLY suggest watching it – there are many ways you can interpret how to enter the info and it needs to be a certain way):

The Printable Forms

To download the printable forms, click here. There is an Instruction Sheet, a Menu Plan Sheet and an Inventory Sheet. You will need to print the Menu Plan Sheet multiple times depending on how many different meals you want to plan.

Planning Tools

We have added these spreadsheets to the BabySteps 3 page and to the Tools page. REMEMBER, check out all our tools on the tools page. We make sure to add any of our most helpful posts in there.

We have updated the Step 3 page with this new information.

View our blog posts NEXT WEEK to view our progress on accomplishing step 3.